The Rise of The Greek Epic

GIFT OF
Trttf
/V\
THE RISE OF THE GREEK EPIC

BEING A COURSE OF LECTURES DELIVERED AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BY
GILBERT MURRAY,
M.A., LL.D.
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY or GLASGOW
OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1907
HENRY FROWDE,
M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK AND TORONTO
PREFACE
THESE
lectures
were written in response to an invitation
from Harvard University to deliver the Gardiner Lane Course for 1907. Only some half of them were actually
The subject had been so long forming itself in my mind, and I was also so anxious not to allow any mere lack of pains to prove me unworthy of the honour
so delivered.
thus offered me, that I soon found
my
material completely
outrunning the bounds of the proposed course. I print but I must confess that those parts of the whole book it which were spoken at Harvard have, if it is not egotistical
;
say so, a special place in association with the constant

to
my
affections,
through their
in
and most considerate kindness
of Mr.
and Mrs. Lane and of
many
others
who became
varying degrees my xenoi in America. The book touches on some subjects where, feeling more than usually conscious of the insecurity of my own
knowledge, I have not scrupled to take advantage of the
learning of
my
friends.
On
several points of archaeology
and primitive history I have sought counsel from Prof. J. L. Myres on points of Old French from Miss Pope of Somer;
ville
College
on Semitic matters, from
my
colleague
Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, whose vast stores have stood always most generously open to me. In a more general
way
am
conscious of help received from Mr. J.

C.
W. Mackail
and Mr. T.
who read the much recent
Harrison, Snow, and above all from Miss Lectures in MS. and called my attention to foreign literature which I should otherwise
J. E.
iv
PREFACE
The debt which I owe to her Prolegomena, on many of the ensuing pages.
have neglected.
also, will be visible
In subjects such as these the conclusions reached by any writer can often be neither certain nor precise. Yet
they may none the less be interesting and even valuable. If our evidence is incomplete, that is no reason for not using it as far as it goes. I have tried throughout the book never to think about making a debating case, or
taking up the positions most easy to defend but always to set out honestly and with much reflection what really seems to me to be most like the truth. I feel, indeed, that
;
ought perhaps to have stated my evidence much more fully and systematically. My excuse is that the lectures
I
were originally written almost without books of reference, and that when I went over them to verify my statements and cite my authorities, I hesitated to load the book with
references
which might be unnecessary, and which in any

in one
I
case were rather in the nature of afterthoughts.
As regards the Homeric Question, which forms
way
or another
felt
an important element in
my subject,
have
that the recent reaction against advanced views long has been largely due, not indeed to lack of knowledge, but
advanced understanding of what the critics really mean. A good part of my present work has therefore lain in thinking out with rather more imaginative
to
'
'
inadequate
effort
many
of the
Homeric
criticism.
common phrases and hypotheses of My own views are not, of course,

any other
writer.
identical with those of
Among
English
most closely with Dr. Leaf, and may almost say that I accept his work as a basis. For the
scholars I agree
rest,
I follow generally in
Lachinann, Kirchhoff, Wilamowitz.

the
the main tradition of Wolff, But the more I read,
more conscious
in
am
sides
the investigation
of good work being done on all of Greek religion and early
PREFACE
history,
v
advance
and of the
astonishing
subjects have made within

still
my own memory.
which those The advance
continues.
Archaeologists are throwing shafts of light
even across that Dark Age of which I speak so

Lectures II and
indulges in
truth on
III.
much
in
!
My own
little
book, heaven knows

final
no dream of making a
statement of the
any part of its field. It is only an attempt to out a little more of the meaning of a certain remote puzzle age of the world, whose beauty and whose power of inspiration
resolutely
seem
to
shine the more wonderful the more
we
set ourselves to
understand
it.
GILBERT MURRAY.
NEW
COLLEGE, OXFORD,
Sept. 1907.
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
PAGES
GREECE AND THE PROGRESS OF MAN

1.
Greek Poetry and Thought conceived as forces

service of
in
[Lecture the
I]
man
:
1-3
'
;
'
Other modern views of the Greeks

a.
b.
The Greek The Greek
as as
'
Classic
'
Pagan
true, if rightly understood directly false

. .
'
3-8 9-22
Hellenism always in an uphill war against ism \ e. g. in the questions of:

1.
Pagan12-15
Human
Slavery
sacrifice
2.
3.
The
subjection of
Women
.
16-19 19-21
.
2.
4. Immorality and Cruelty The Greek as Levantine Poetry and Progress. Can Poetry advance
.
c.
......
?
21-22
~
:
'
Can
life
interest
.
in the bettering of life be a poetical

3.
emotion?
23-25
25-27
28
The Puritan and the

their union,
Artist.
The bettering of
implies
.'
.
and
this is
found in Hellenism
Sophrosyne
A.
1.
THE PEOPLE
:
THE MIGRATIONS
THE POLIS
[Lecture II]
1.
2.
The pre-historic cities followed by a Dark Age The stones The traditions A commercial civilization, not Greek but pre-Greek
,
29-3U 29-31
.
31-36
30-39
39 -55
3.
instanced by Mycenae, Troy, &c.) Ruined by invasions of peoples from the North Aegean peoples, Pelasgi, Hittites
....
(as
39-43
.
4.
Northerners, Achaeans, &c. Processes of invasion
....
;
complications of races
43-44
4 ><>
The beginnings
viii

PAGES
Condition about the thirteenth century, B.C. Last stages by land and by sea seizing an island
. .
454s
49 53
This picture confirmed by the foundation-legends of the Ionian cities

5.
53-55
56-57
The Dark Age
the Walled City
Religion of the Polis
57-58
II.
THE CHAOS OF THE MIGRATIONS AND THE ELEMENT OF REGENERATION

[Lecture III]
institutions
. . .
. .
A.
The wreck of
1.
59-80
59-65
2.
Agricultural sanctions; the ox Tribal Gods the breaking up of tribes

:
65-68
68 73
3.
4.
Heroes, oracles, the dead The local Komi, or Earth-Maidens
....
.
73-74
74-78
78-80 80-90
">. The family, patriarchal and pre-patriarchal Hesiod's Fifth age and the survival of Aidos and Nemesis
.
B. A-i'los and
Xemw's
of the words
The meaning
......
Greek
civilization as a
Hesiod's five deadly sins The sanctity of the helpless
80-84 85
85-87
Small importance of Aidos in later Greek philosophy: Reasons

Effect of this
87-89
early anarchy on
whole
89-90
B.
I.
THE LITERATURE
[Lecture IV]
AN ANCIENT TRADITIONAL BOOK

'
1.
Nature of
1 '
ii
Logoi The Muses.
book in early times and Logioi Andres'
......
'
9298
92-94 94-96
The Grammata
'
2.
97 Long life and growth of a book Examples: The Pilot series, Arabic Chronicles, 98 the Pseudo-Calli.100-101 sthenes, 99-100; The Song of Roland
;
.
3.
Especially the
Jtt'ittcroiiouiy
Hebrew
scriptures
101-115
J,
EandP;
their sources
in
and growth
the
....
told
101-102
102-109
Disturbing influences IVntateuch
history
by
.
the
.
109-115

a.
ix
PAGES
Unconscious
:
myth, tribal
spirit,
inadequate lan.
.
guage
b.
Conscious: archaism and expurgation
109-110 110-115
II.
THE ILIAD AS A TRADITIONAL BOOK

EXPURGATIONS
:
:
A.
THE HOMERIC
SPIRIT
[Lecture V]
1.
Successful expurgations
a.
b.
Impurity
116-117
117-121
Cruel and barbarous practices (torture, stripping the

dead, poisoned arrows, &c.)
c.
Human
1.
Sacrifice
121-130
Sacrifice of Virgins.
The Taboo
2.
Sacrifice of Divine Kings.
War Path Division between Man

of the
121-125 126-130
and God
2.
Expurgation baffled Hector; cf. Uriah how Homer rises to the occasion The Iliad in Education the Homeric Spirit
: ;
130-133
133-135
B.
EVIDENCES
[Lecture VI]
Unconscious changes of Custom 1. Armour and tactics the Mycenaeans and the
;
136-154
*
Bronzen
137-146
Men'
(General armour, 137-140; tactics, 141-142 143-144 K and the Odyssey, 145.)
;
the thorex,
2.
3.
4.
5. 6.
7.
Bronze and iron Burial and burning Altars and Temples Hedna and dowries Houses Megaron and Palace Other points
.
146-147
147-148
148-150
......
.
150-152 152-153
154
C.
PECULIARITIES
1.
Tradition and Artistic Fiction
[Lecture VII] the latter prominent in Greek Epos 155 Contrast with the Book of Judges how the material of 155-158 Judges might appear in a Greek epic
; ; . . .

Interaction of Tradition and Fiction
....
:
.
PAGES
158-159
The basis of the Iliad is Tradition, not Fiction The Iliad using older sources Bellerophon and Lycur;
gus from the Corin'hiaca Reciprocal quotation in traditional books
159-163
ir
.
Some
'2.
sources of the Iliad

. .
the Iliad ? Not a Chronicle poem Not exactly a Lay But a Lay expanded and made to outgrow
is
What
164-165 165
166-168
all
natural
limits
(Fictional use of the Wrath-motive)

3.
....
.
.
.
168-170
169
For what purpose can such a poem have been destined ? 170-177 171-172 The Panathenaea-tY&d.itwn and its meaning 173-176 Before the Panatlicnaea ?
Epideixis
177
1).
THE HISTORICAL CONTENT OF THE ILIAD AND THE

BIRTH OF HOMER
1.
An
inscribed Asherah
[Lecture VI11] 178
Fiction, Myth, History Characters of Fiction: Phemius, Briseis,

2.
178-180
fcc.
. . .
180
Characters of
Achilles
Myth
or History
180-190
180-183 183-185
Agamemnon
Thersites
Aias
Diomedes
3.
Incidents of History
....
;
... ...
Adrastus
.
185-187 187-188
188-190 190-194
190 192-194
Sarpedon and Tlepolemus The Androktasiai Idomeneus and Phaestus

;
4.
Original geography.
Homes
:
of Achilles, Andromache,
Hector, Helen, &c Suggested conclusion Battles of the mainland and
195-198
else-
where brought over

'
to
Troy
Iliad
. .
199-201
Main historical elements in the formation of the The Birth of Homer.' The Aeolic Homer
.
201-202 202-205
Pre-aeolic
pre-homeric Second 'birth of Homer
is
The
Ionic
Homer
205-206 .206-208

III.
xi
THE ILIAD AS A GREAT POEM

PAGES
[Lecture IX]
How scientific
Difficulties
analysis affects our appreciation of the Iliad,

its
and where
greatness
lies
.
209-231 210-211
A. Apparent vices of the Iliad as a 1. Subject second-rate

2.
3.
poem
211-212
tfcc.
.
Lack of
'
hidden parts; contradictions, Loose use of linguistic forms

finish in
'
.
212-213 214
215-219 Ready-made descriptions and similes (Examples from M the baffled lion, 215-216 the two oaks, 217-218.) These seem to show a lack of originality or even of sincerity. B. Answer. The nature and the standards of a Traditional Book 219-231 219-222 Originality and intensity of imagination Intensity of imagination in the Iliad and the Old Testa4.
.
.
'
'
ment
(Jehu and Helen, 223-224.)
...
222-225
This intensity not connected with self-assertion, but with

self-devotion
225-228
Position of a late
'
Hence comes the peculiar appeal of most Traditional Books 229-231
...
IV.
Son of Homer
'
227-229
....
;
.
IONIA
AND ATTICA
.
1.
[Lecture X] never born in Miletus or Ephesus why ? 232 233-234 Thales, &c Spirit of Ionia in its bloom The ultimate failure of Expurgation to meet the demands
Homer
is
of this
new
a.ge
234-5
2.
Homeric theology satisfied neither local superstition nor advanced thought 235-238 The Milesian Spirit and its treatment of the Homeric Gods 237-240
Examples
Titanomachia in Hesiod and Theomachia in
Homer
240-242
243-244
Hi eras Gamos and Dios Apate

3.
The Epos
dies in Ionia
but the Heroic Saga finds a

spirit
new
a
vehicle in Attic Tragedy, which goes back to severer
and more antique

:
....
245-246
Examples
Conclusion
lo in Aeschylus
.,,....,,.
the Suppliant
Women, the Prometheus 246-250

251-252
GREECE AND THE PROGRESS OF MAN

lectures form the first part of an attempt to the growth of Greek poetry from a particular point study of view, namely, as a force and the embodiment of a force
THESE
making
for the progress of the
human
race.
By
progress I
understand some gradual ennobling and enriching of the content of life or, if you will excuse more theological language,
;
EEKATUM
the bottom, for Cos read p. 12, second line from See Mayer in Roseher's Lexicon, Kronos^ vol. ii. p. 1509. The authorities quoted by him, however, do not fully bear out his description of he ritual.
In the note on
Rhodes.
'
[Murray: Rue. of the Greek Epic.]
We all know with what Does he make life a better thing ? and passionate Puritanism this view is asserted by rigid Plato. But Plato can never be taken as representing the average man. There is better evidence of ordinary feeling in the Frogs of Aristophanes.1 On what grounds should a poet be admired ? says Aeschylus, and Euripides answers For his skill, his good counsel, and because we make
4
'
'
'
'
men
1
better in their cities
'.
Amid
all
:
the
many cross-currents
159,
v. 1008, 1035, elsewhere.
and the whole scene
cf.
also Isocr. iy.
and
UfSIIVE
GREECE AND THE PROGRESS

OF
THESE
MAN
lectures form the first part of an attempt to the growth of Greek poetry from a particular point study of view, namely, as a force and the embodiment of a force
making
for the progress of the
human
race.
By
progress I
understand some gradual ennobling and enriching of the content of life or, if you will excuse more theological language, some movement towards the attainment of that chief end
; '
of
man
',
which
is,
the document
'
to glorify
known in Scotland as the God and enjoy him for ever

all
according to the magnificent definition of Shorter Catechism ',

'
'.
the arts, even poetry, as being so forms or parts of the service of man, may strike a many hearer at first as somewhat modern and removed from ancient
This conception of
habits of thought. But I think the truth The idea of service to the community was
in the
reflect
is
just the opposite^
more deeply rooted
as soon as they began to which they did very early the main question they asked about each writer was almost Does he help to make better men 1 always upon these lines We all know with what Does he make life a better thing ?
Greeks than in
us.
And
about literature at
c
all
'
'
'
rigid
and passionate Puritanism this view is asserted by Plato. But Plato can never be taken as representing the average man. There is better evidence of ordinary feeling in the Frogs of Aristophanes.1 On what grounds should a poet be admired ? says Aeschylus, and Euripides answers For his skill, his good counsel, and because we make
c '
'
men
1
better in their cities
'.
Amid
all
:
the
many cross-currents
159,
v. 1008, 1035, elsewhere.
and the whole scene
cf.
also Isocr. iv.
and

is
of criticism illustrated in the Frogs, there

this judging of poetry
no protest against
is
by
its fruits.
The
principle
accepted
or the
by
all parties.
Among
later writers the idea of the service of
man,
bettering of
human
'
life,
has become habitual and familiar.
Diodorus begins his history by a reference to the long chain of historians who have aspired by their own labours to benefit
our
Polybius speaks of history as the most obvious help towards the correcting of life '. Thucydides, as we all remember, will be content if his work,
life
'-
common
'
whether interesting or uninteresting to an audience, is judged to be useful. Denys of Halicarnassus sums up the praises
Athenians by saying, in the very language of an old Delphian decree, that they made gentle the life of the world '.
of the
'
Theologians and philosophers, especially those of the more rationalist schools, carry the conception further. The
traditional
of past ages
4
Gods are explained as being so many great men who have in their various ways served humanity. That which benefits human life is God,' said Prodicus in
fifth
the
century B.C.
widely current, a
Stoic,
And in later times the view is always common meeting ground for Euhemerist,
The
history taught in schools largely
generalize
and Epicurean.
if
consisted,
we may
in lists of these benefactors of
from our extant Scholiasts, mankind

:
Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artis, 2 Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo.
It is the
artist or
1
very language and spirit of Positivism. The modern admirer of art is apt to be offended by it. Not,
1
Diod.
i.
rofs tbiots irovots wtyeXrjffat rov KOIVOV fiiov iûAort/tf^tyra?.

;
Cf.
Time. i. 22 ; Dion. Hal. Polyb. i. 1 Tts tToipoTtpa SiopOojats rofs avOpwirois de Thucyd. p. 919 'AOrjvaiot . ol rov KOIVOV ftiov frjncpd(Tavr$. Herodotus, as one might expect, has more of the mere artist about him he writes, u>y HTJTC rd ywApwa c dvOpwirow rf XP V V fri;Aa ytvijrat, AOJT* tpya peyd\a T
. . :
/cat Ocvv petard,
rd piv "EAAfprt, rd
5^
0ap0dpotat d-no^t\0kvra, d/t\(d ytvrjrat
(i.
1).
For the decree of the Delphic Amphictyons, see at end of this lecture. 2 Cf. Lucr. v, all the latter part. I suspect that Vergil, Aen. vi. 663. this view of human history was largely inspired by the great work of Dicaearchus, B/os 'EAAdSoy. He was an immediate disciple of Aristotle; the Life of Hdlas was a history of Greek civilization. Fragments in F. H. 0. ii.
THE SERVICE OF MAN
In a Greek society the artist was treated I think, justly. frankly as a friend and fellow worker. In a modern society
is a distinguished alien, approached with a mixture of adulation and mistrust.
he
That for granted many fundamental theses. has progressed, for one thing, and that the direction in which Western civilization has moved is on the whole
I
must take
man
a good one.
propositions
;
I think that
few of us seriously deny these and those who do would not be moved by my
arguments.
Now we find it generally admitted that the seeds of Western

mostly to be found in Greece and not elseYet it is curious how seldom Greek Literature is regarded from this point of view, as an embodiment of the progressive spirit, an expression of the struggle of the human soul towards freedom and ennoblement.
civilization are
where.
We have had in abundance the classical point of view. The Greeks have been the Classics, the masters in art and letters, models of a finished and more or less unapproachable perfection in form. Or rather, to put it more accurately, the Greeks round about the fifth century B.C., and the Romans of the centuries just before and after the Christian era, have been peculiarly the Classics, and other writers have been
admitted to various degrees
of classic dignity in proportion
as they approached to the two great periods. Now I should like, if time permitted, to trace this conception to its origin. Unreal as it sometimes sounds, it has its
periods did, for
The Greeks and Romans of those two some reason or other, produce in most departments of thought better work than any of the generations that succeeded them for some thousand years or so and what is more, the generations of the decadence had the extreme good sense to see it. As regards literature, the point
base in mere fact.
;
is
too obvious to need illustration.

field,
different
the science of medicine.
Let us take a quite If a man wished
to learn medicine in the later ages of the B 2
Roman or
Byzantine
go for
empires, and right on to the Renaissance, to whom did he his knowledge ? He went, as far as I can make out,
handbooks and epitomes of the works of two of Galen, a Greek who practised in Rome in the year 160 A.D., and of Hippocrates, a Greek who practised in Cos and Athens in the fifth century B.C. And Galen's own work largely takes the form of a commentary on Hippocrates. There is an interesting MS. extant of a treatise on Dislocato various
ancient doctors
by one Apollonius of Citium in Cyprus. The MS. was written in Constantinople about the year 950 A.D., and it begins with a paean of joy over the discovery of the works
tions
of this ancient surgeon,
with his accurate drawings to show
how
the various dislocations should be set.
written out.
The
illustrations
were carefully
The text was copied. Where
the old drawings were blurred or

left
damaged the copies were 1 incomplete, lest some mistake should be made. Why ? Because this ancient surgeon, living about 150 B.C., knew
to set dislocated limbs a great deal better than people
lived a thousand years after him.
It
how who
was a piece
of
good
fortune to
them
to rediscover his work.
And
his writing,
again, takes the
form
of a
commentary on the
Hippocrates.
\
Hippocrates'
own
and
fifth-century writing does not look back.

I will not
It is consciously progressive
original.
That
is
what the
Classics once were.
attempt
to trace the stages through which their empire has waned and their power to help us dwindled away. What they now
possess
is
is
progressive and transient, and another which stationary or eternal. In some things we find that a very third-rate person who happens to have been born in 1860
is
express a part that
it
a limited but a most interesting domain. I will in this way. There seems to be in human effort
can teach us far more than a great genius or a great reformer who was born in 1760. About electricity, for instance, or
steamships.
1
In the other sphere
it
is
the quality of the
See Schone's introduction to his large edition (Teubner, 1896), where

is
this point
proved.
THE CLASSICS
or his
:
man
*
by distance
work which tells. And it tells almost unaffected what was once beautiful is still beautiful
;
what was once great of soul is still great. And if Shakespeare was born nearly 400 years ago, and St. Paul 1900 and Aeschylus 2000 odd, those facts do not seem to make any noteworthy
difference in the value of their work.
This distinction
is,
I think, implied in the current phrase which says that the ancient Greeks are still classics in point of style.
Now, in the narrow sense of style, any such view as this would be almost grotesque. No modern historian could of possibly model his style on the strange contorted language no playwright could copy Aeschylus. Aeschylus Thucydides and Thucydides were men of extraordinary genius who They are irresistibly bent the Greek language to their will. of normal style. If, however, not, in any literal sense, models
;
we understand style broadly enough, so that style means form ', and form includes spirit ', then, the same as The classical books are in I think, the principle is true. the books which have possessed for mankind such general vitality of interest that they are still read and enjoyed at a time when all the other books written within ten centuries There must be someof them have long since been dead.
'
'
'
'
'
'
ithing peculiar
about a book of which the world feels after two thousand years that it has not yet had enough. One would like to know what it is that produces this permanent
of interest.
and not transient quality

'that that
And
it is
partly for
we study can know. Form or

matter
;
the Classics.
spirit
In some few ways one in some sense lives longer than

;
what austerity perhaps lives longer than sweetness is and serious lives longer than what is merely clever. simple Much more remains unanalysable, or can only be found by
study of the books themselves.
that
But there are
qualities
and that which lives becomes classical. things live Yet I think that this kernel of truth is involved in much
;
make
error. It is probable that these models of style, as they were read both in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were often bad models rather than good. The accident was

And
and
original of all literatures
imitated, not the essence.

living
the influence of the most
of Classicism, a style
as
I
it
produced the corruptness almost certainly very vicious, inasmuch lacked freedom and lived by ready-made ornamentation.
style
mean a
which was largely inspired by Ovid and which

;
a style in which people ran riot during the Renaissance Phoebus or the orb of day ', and were called the sun
' '
'
proud of knowing stories of a complicated mythology which was not accessible to the vulgar '. There are traces of something like classicism in Greek poetry, I admit. They are the
'
first
signs of its decay.
The
classicist spirit is just so far
related to the living spirit of
form of That sort

is
Greek poetry, that it is a ranker the same poison by which Greek poetry died.
of eighteenth- century or Renaissance classicism dead, or no longer an active danger to the underperhaps standing of Greek. But there are other classicisms which
Scholars in talking of the classics have allowed the object of their study to become confused with the medium through which they approach it. It is as though
threaten us
still.
'
man could not think of the stars except in terms of telescopes,
and sea except in terms of railway journeys and hotels. Nearly all of us approach the classics through an atmosphere of education, with its concomitants of die-' tionary and grammar, its unnatural calm, its extreme emphasis upon dutifulness and industry, and the subtle degradation
or of mountains
of spirit
produced by its system Some indeed take another
of examinations.
path.
critics
onwards there have been
many
From Winckelmann who felt, for obvious

more
reasons, that they could understand a Greek statue

easily
than a Greek poem. Hence comes another sort of classicism, a tendency to explain the poems by the statues. A false road partly because the immense majority of extant
;
statues are not Classical Greek,
but Graeco-Roman, and marked with the taint of the decadence partly because,
:
in the essence of things,
poems are made
of quick words,
and statues
been.
of stone, things that are
not alike and never have
DIFFICULTIES OF UNDERSTANDING
fact
seems to be that the understanding of Greek poetry The needs first a good deal of hard linguistic study, and then,
since every one who likes poetry must have in himself some germs of a poet, a poet's readiness of imaginative sympathy.
As things
are, the poetical

:
grammatical drudgery
has dried up.
minds are often repelled by the and the grammarians at the end of
their labours are apt to find that their little spring of poetry
The wise want
And
As to
all
love, and those who love want best things are thus confused to ill.
wisdom
all
these
dogmas about what
is Classical,
I think
;
we
classical should be on our guard. Classical and modern classical and Christian there are no doubt and romantic
; ;
some real differences corresponding to these phrases, but I would urge respectfully upon any student who loves poetry, that he should approach his ancient poets quite simply and take what they have to give him, not start off by expecting them to be classical or statuesque or pre-Christian or anything else. The more you understand them, the less
'
'
'
'
'
of these differences
you
lie
will feel.
And
for a simple reason
that the differences
remoteness.
We
largely in the accident of our own stand very far off, and have to strain our
For us the comparison of ancient and modern is so eyes. largely a comparison of something half -seen at a distance with something which we know intimately. We are apt
are apt to miss the little lights and shades, the quick vibrations of emotion that existed to a Greek in some particular word or phrase, and
to see only the large outlines
;
we
therefore
we think they
are not there.
We mentally translate
;
the words into a sort of dictionary language, never very apt

indeed, but,
we hope, at least dignified removed alike from and from littleness because it is emptied of most subtlety of its meaning serene and unemotional because we have not the knowledge or the sympathy to catch, across this gulf of years, the peculiar thrill of what was once a winged
;
word
'
flying
from soul to
soul.
It is perhaps in this depart-

of
ment that the most pressing work

to be done.
pure scholarship remains
That conception
basis of truth.
It
of
is
the Greeks as Classic, then, has a only apt to be misstated, and so to
darken counsel.
of it
which
is
There is, however, a peculiar modification a almost the direct opposite of the truth
;
conception of Hellenism as representing some easy-going half -animal form of life, untroubled by conscience or ideals
and the Greeks as a gay unconscious hedonistic race, possessing the somewhat superficial merits of extreme good looks and a mythically fine climate. There is no
or duties,
reason to suppose the ancient Greeks miraculously handsome, anymore than to suppose that there is no dirty weather
in the
Aegean.
it,
This view has so

that one wonders
little of
the semblance of
truth about
There are
can have arisen. mentioned above, the presence of the Graeco-Roman statues and the special difficulties of understanding the finer sides of the Greek language. But this particular conception of the Greeks as Pagans comes,
it
how
of course the causes
'
'
I think, largely
t
from the mere need
of
an antithesis to Chris-
Christian apologists, anxious to 'utility on its ascetic side. associate all the highest things in the world with their own
religion,
have proceeded to make the Greek a sort
of type
what the natural man would be without Christianity* And they have been met half-way by the rebels of their own flock, intellectual people of an artistic, a revolutionary, or
of
a pleasure-loving temperament, who have turned against the narrowness or conventionality of their Christian surroundin #R, and then accepted, as a rough embodiment of their
own rebellious ideals, some imaginary Pagan Greek. That would explain why this odd ideal of the Pagan Man should be abroad at all. But why should the Greeks be chosen as representing him ? Partly for their mere eminence. They
are
the
chief
representatives
of
Partly, tionate attention sometimes bestowed on particular parts of
modern Christendom.
I think,
high civilization outside from a dispropor-
THE PAGAN MAN

literature.
Greek
But
largely for a reason peculiar to their
own
case,
which
meet with it in an age when certain great

to be securely
be very influential. We shall often during these lectures. It is that we, living
I believe to
strides in
human
progress seem
made and to need no more thinking about, look back upon these early pioneers of progress with some lack of historical sympathy, and attribute to the Greek
spirit itself
a number of primitive habits which it was not quite strong enough to conquer or else had not the leisure
Anthropologists have shown us what this Pagan Man is. From the West Coast of Africa to the Pacific Isles
to grapple with.
really
in many varying shapes he meets us, still with the old gaiety, the old crowns of flowers, the night-long dances, the phallus-
bearing processions, the untroubled vices. We feel, no doubt, a charm in his simple and instinctive life, in the quick laughter and equally quick tears, the directness of action, the un-
must all of us have hesitating response of sympathy. wished from time to time that our friends were more like
Polynesians
;
We
Ltowns.
And
especially those of us who live in University! MU<*~4 I think, in a certain limited sense, the Greeks
probably were so. But in the main, as all classical literature shows, the Greek and the Pagan are direct opposites. That
instinctive
all
Pagan has a strangely weak hold on life. He is and blind cruelty and helplessness. The is really the unregenerate human animal, and Pagan Man
beset with terror
Hellenism is a collective name for the very forces which, at; ^the time under discussion, strove for his regeneration. Yet, historically, one of the most characteristic tilings about Hellenism
it
is that, though itself the opposite of savagery, had savagery always near it. The peculiar and essential value of Greek civilization lies not so much in the great height which it ultimately attained, as in the wonderful spiritual effort by which it reached and sustained that height. The pre-Hellenic Aegean societies were in some ways highly developed, in others a mere welter of savagery. But the rise of Greece began from something a little worse than the average
10

Aegean
societies.
level of barbaric
It began, as I
hope to
fell
show
in the second of these lectures, in the
dark age which
resulted
when even
these societies, such as they were,
into chaos.
Allowing for indefinite differences of

the same
to be
;
detail,
there seems
life,
to be a certain primitive effortless level of

all
human
much
the world over, below which society would cease a kind of world-wide swamp above which a few nations
have
built
what seem
Others
like
dwellings. into the slough. la boue home-sickness ' for the mud is a strong emotion in the human race. One sees it often in individual life. One can think of many
c
make transient La nostalgic de
permanent and well-weathered refuges which sink back
instances in history Seleucidae in Syria
Hellenic kingdoms like that of the many provinces in the decline of the
;
Roman empire
the west of Asia under the rule of the Turks
the rush of reaction in ancient Egypt after the religious reform of Amen-Hotep or, again, the many efforts after
;
higher religion in India, and the regular falling back of each reformation into the same primitive slough. Now, as Greek civilization rose from the swampy level of the neighbouring peoples, especially the various pre-Semitic races just behind the Aegean coasts, it could not shake itself clean all at once. Remnants of savagery lingered on in obscure parts of life, expurgated as a rule and made comparatively innocent, but still bearing the mark of their origin. Such remnants, as a matter of fact, tend to receive undue attention.
>
The Greeks themselves are puzzled at a strange practice.,
Herodotus says that the explanation of it is sacred, and better not mentioned. Pausanias describes it with an anti-,.
quarian's zest.
Plutarch has a comforting theory of
its real
Our own friends the anthropologists, allegorical meaning. to whom all true Hellenists owe so much, naturally revel in
such things.
They search antiquity eagerly
for traces of
primitive man, for totems, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and the like. The traces which they discover are of the
greatest value.
But
I think they
have often mistaken the
HELLENISM AGAINST PAGANISM

itself.
11
reverberation of an extinct barbarity for the actual barbarity

strikes one most in Greek society is not so much bad things that were actually done. Of course there were any bad things, and always have been in all societies. It is rather
What
the frightful proximity of worse things still. Practices that to us seem like the scarce credible stories of a remote past were to the fifth- century Athenian possibilities and even
dangers. and the
palpable.
The jungle grew

barrier
thick
between
and close all around them, seemed very weak, very im-
You will notice in the ordinary language of ancient writers a characteristic which throws light on this aspect of Greek Non-Hellenic nations are nearly always spoken of by life.
their
tribes
;
or
races
'Ethne'
Pelasgians,
Macedonians,
cities, or,
Phoenicians
the Greeks are spoken of by their
what
comes to the same thing, by their islands Milesians, Phocaeans, Eretrians, Athenians. On the mainland it is the Polis or circuit in wall that forms the essential boundary of the nation
;
the case of the islands, Samos, Naxos, Aegina, it is the equivalent wall of sea. Every Greek community is like a garrison
amid wide hordes of barbarians a picked body of men, of whom each individual has in some sense to live up to a higher standard than can be expected of the common human animal. As the shield is the typical weapon of the Greek warrior, so the wall is the typical mark of Greek It is one of the facts that most need remembercivilization. in order to understand the greatnesses and the flaws of ing Hellenism, that it was represented everywhere by a handful of men holding an outpost, men who wrought their wonderful day's work in political and moral wisdom, in speculation, in beauty of outward form and inward imagining, with an ear ever open to the sternest of life's calls, and the hated spear and shield never far out of reach. No wonder that the task was too hard for them As a matter of fact, Greek civilization itself was never for a long enough time well policed and
of civilization
;
!
organized,
its
remoter villages were never thoroughly enough
12

make
it
educated, to
some sudden blind resurgence
secure, even in its central places, against of the savage.
Take, for instance, the case of Human Sacrifice. The memory of a time when human beings had been deliberately
slaughtered as a way of pleasing God runs through the literature of the fifth century as of something far-off, romantic, horrible.
We may
compare it to our own memories of the burning of heretics and witches, deeds which we know to have been done quite lately, by men very like ourselves, and yet deeds which we can scarcely conceive as psychologically possible to any sane being. In just the same way, to the earliest of the
great Athenians, Aeschylus, the sacrifice of Iphigenia
is
some-
1 The man who did thing monstrous, beyond understanding. To Euripides such acts are generally it must have been mad.
connected with a study of the worst
possibilities of
a savage
mob,
or of scheming kings led

'
by malignant and
half -insane
In an interesting fourth-century document, the dialogue called Minos ', which is attributed to Plato, human sacrifice is treated as the extreme of what is to us unlawful ',
priests.
c
and
yet, the speaker insists, it

'
certain people
the law
'
;
was at one time and among and there are rumours still, he
adds, of strange sacrifices in the secret places of Arcadian 2 It is the tone in which we might remind ourselves, hills
!
for instance, that
even in the
last
decade or so
women have
The and the society which he addresses, feel themselves entirely remote from such practices. And yet how close to them on all sides this abomination
been tortured as witches in the Abruzzi or in Ireland.
writer himself,
it
knew It is not only that continued throughout all antiquity to be practised in times of great crises by all the barbarians of the Mediterranean
pressed, closer indeed than they
!
AiffxpoprjTis raXaiva
irapafcona
IT
pour OTTTJ pew,
Aesch. Ag. 222.
But the
whole passage should be read. 8 He refers also to the descendants of Athamas as practising p. 315 b. a similar sacrifice. But there he is misinformed or, more likely, straining his point in the argument. In the Athamas ritual the victim escaped. See texts in Roscher's Lexicon. Compare the Pelops-Oenomaus ritual in in which the sacrificing priest pursued the victim with a spear, but was first blindfolded and had to run hand in hand with two small children.
GREECE AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

It
is
13
not only that we find Hipponax describing the of the pharmakoi at Ephesus, a grotesque and possibly a somewhat cruel business which clearly was a sort of mock human sacrifice. Hipponax was a satirist of
coasts.
ritual slaying
the sixth century B.C., with a liking for horrors, and Ephesus was a partially barbarian town. But we find the thing
In a well-known passage of the Frogs Aristophanes ends up a passage of comic abuse of certain persons much admired by his opponents, by saying
creeping closer than that.
c
that,
'
in the old days, people
would have thought twice before

'
using them
c
as pharmakoi
'
'
Scarecrows,' shall
'
The word means Guy-Fawkeses cines ', or Late and scapegoats '.
?
literally
we say ? or human medi-
careless writers speak
these pharmakoi were actually sacrificed. But fortunately we happen to have a fragment of an ancient thirdas
if
century historian, Ister,

really
city,
who
explains
what
this
odd business
amounted
to.
Two
one for the women, They wore necklaces, one of white
persons, one for the men of the were led out as though to execution.
figs,
the other of black.
They seem to have been solemnly presented with cake and treated, figs, and then scourged and pelted out of the city I hasten to add in fact, very like the Lion and the Unicorn. that the scourging was done with little twigs and skillai, a flower very like a bluebell, and the pelting with similar The victims are said to have been ineffective objects. and various smaller volunteers, and chosen for their ugliness details in the ceremony are meant to be grotesque and At the end, the pharmakoi were supposed to be absurd. dead and their ashes were thrown into the sea. The ceremony was an imitation ', says Ister, of a stoning to death.1 When did it become an imitation ? When was it, as it must We cannot originally have been, a real stoning to death ? The Human Medicine is the relic of a very ancient, say.
;
'
1 See Appendix A, on the Pharmakoi. The word seemed in Greek to be the masc. of Qapnatcov, ' medicine ; but it was probably a foreign word. Hence the d in Ionic, as in Aa/>efos and other foreign words. In Attic the
'
is
short by analogy from
<
14
very widespread, pre-Hellenic barbarity, which the Greeks have not swept altogether away, but have allowed to live
on with
its
teeth drawn.
But the abomination creeps closer still. There is a story about Themis tocles told by Plutarch on the authority of one Phanias of Lesbos. Phanias wrote some 200 years after the alleged incident, and some of the other stories he tells do not
command
credence
for instance, the statement that once
in the Chersonnese fish

story, as he tells
it, is
came down
in the rain. 1
Still
the
not incredible.
And
*
it
exactly illustrates
'
the points which I wish to convey. When Themistocles as admiral was making the chief sacrifice beside his flag-ship
this
was
in the last crisis of the Persian invasion, just before
the battle of Salamis

prisoners,
men
of
him three great beauty, gorgeously arrayed and

*
there were brought
up
to
adorned with gold. When Euphrantides the prophet there is sure to be a prophet in such a business saw them, since the holy fire at that moment burst into a great and
'
* !
brilliant flame,
and there was a
significant sneeze
on the
right
the prophet clutched Themistocles by the right hand and commanded him to dedicate the young men and sacrifice
;
name of Dionysus Omestes (the he said, " and there is deliverance Devourer). and victory for Hellas." Themistocles was horrified at the and monstrous demand. But, as so often prophet's strange
all,
them
crying on the "
Do
this,"
happens in great
putting
all their
crises
and times
of suffering, the multitude,
hopes in something irrational rather than in reason, shrieked to the god with one voice, dragged the prisoners to the altar, and, as the prophet commanded,
compelled the whole sacrifice to take place.' It is not said that Themistocles performed the act. (Plut. Them, xiii.) Now the evidence for the story is weak. Themistocles is
both the shadiest and the most maligned of great Greek The whole story may be an outrageous slander invented by his enemies after his ostracism. But that
statesmen.
1
I find that I
was wrong
to
doubt Phanias's word
here.
There had
lu-t-n
a waterspout at sea.
GREECE AND HUMAN SACRIFICE
15
It was, apparently, a actually told. It must have been, if not true, at least posstory not beyond the bounds of credibility to excited persons. sible
scarcely alters its historical significance.
As a matter
of fact, it is just
on occasions
:
like this that
human sacrifices have most tended to occur

army
or a rabble full of fear, egged
or prophet.
in a disorganized priest
on by some fanatical
There were bloody doings in Rome when the fear of Hannibal was strong, judicial murders of vestal virgins,
buryings alive of
*
Gallus et Galla, Graecus et Graeca
'
in the
Forum Boarium. (Livy, xxii. 57.) There was a great burning of Jews, we may remember, after the earthquake at Lisbon,
of
Perhaps the most tragic case, however, was the outbreak human sacrifice at Jerusalem in the seventh century,
inspired
by the imminent
terror of Assyria.
Jews who had
been taught to believe that Yahweh was their only refuge, saw, or seemed to see, with despair that their sacrifices were
availing nothing. They must give him more give him anything in the world, if only he will avert the horror of an
:
Assyrian conquest, with

flayed alive.
its pyramids of heads and its prisoners about them, these unhappy devotees Looking
saw the human sacrifices of Tyre and Sidon, and knew that there was still one thing which they might offer. No wonder
Yahweh did not hear them, when they were giving less than the heathen gave So began the burnings of children at the Of course the practice was tophet in the vale of Hinnom. denounced by the prophets, and comparatively soon ceased.
!
The point
to observe
is
that in Greece, and
it
would seem
in
Greece alone throughout classical times, we find no parallel to this kind of thing. A desperate attempt was made by the
superstitious party to force a crime of the sort
in the terrible
moments
upon Pelopidas, before the battle of Leuctra. 1 But it
1 See Appendix A. The case in Philostratus, Vit. Apol. iv. 10, where the thaumaturge Apollonius of Tyana, being at Ephesus during a plague, recognized a certain deformed beggar as being a demon of pestilence, and set the crowd to stone him to death, was a horrid act on the part of an unauthorized mob, not a deliberate human sacrifice approved by the law. But the Asiatic cities were terribly infected with barbarism by the time of Nero. The incident has elements of the pharmakos rite in it
16
failed.

Human
sacrifice
was barbaric, not Greek.
If
the
Themistocles story is true, that one bloody outburst of superstitious fear stands alone. There were other occasions
on which all the conditions for such a deed seem to have been present. Think of Xenophon's Ten Thousand after Cunaxa think of Nicias's army after the last battle before
:
but Syracuse. All the conditions for the thing are there not the thing. The very idea is incongruous to one's conceptions of Nicias or Xenophon. That is Hellenism.
;
Human
sacrifice,
then,
is
one
of
the barbarities whichj
was either abolished] entirely or else, as in the case of the pkarmakoi at Athens, reduced to some harmless ceremonial which satisfied religious
Hellenism successfully overcame.
It
conservatism without inflicting
much harm on human
beings.
But there were other strongholds of the primitive beast in man which even Athens was not powerful enough to conquer. To take three points we find among the Greeks the institution of slavery, fixed and unshaken women in a markedly
:
subject condition as compared with our own times, though far removed again from the seclusion of the East and
;
lastly,
proceeding partly from the institution of slavery, from certain forms of military organization, some partly startling phenomena of what we should call unchastity
in
the
relations
of
the
sexes.
And then we imagine

!
that these things are characteristically Greek They are just the reverse. They are the remnants of that primaeval slime from which Hellenism was trying to make
mankind clean. The Greeks are not
characteristically slave-holders.
All
the world held slaves^ând had always done so.^\The Greeks are characteristically the first human beings who felt a doubt
or scruple about slavery
;
who were
troubled in mind by
as far as
it,
who
of
thought, wrote, schemed, in the face

of absolutely
we can
judge
it,
overmastering social needs, to be rid
some two thousand years before it was abolished in Europe. I do not refer specially to the efforts of isolated
GREECE AND SLAVERY

we know, condemned
17
The Cynics, slavery root and branch. The Stoics and certain religious organizations from the fourth century onward refused to recognize its existence, and professed to count all men free. Euripides was troubled by it, and can scarcely get the subject off his mind. The sophist Alcidamas seems to have made a preaching tour round the Peloponnese to induce all states to combine in a general emancipation and, curiously enough, was not But the tone of the non-reforming writers is murdered.
reformers.
;
equally interesting as evidence. Homer, though of course no thought of doing without slaves ever crosses his horizon, speaks always of slaves with a half -puzzled tenderness. Slavery is to him a terrible thing that may happen to any man, and will take away half of his manhood '. The heroes are as courteous to the slaves, Eumaeus and Eurycleia, as to one another. Plato, bred in an anti-democratic circle and
*
generally in protest against the ideals of the great sophists In of the fifth century, does not care to denounce slavery.
silently by merely con-^ In the Laws, written in structing a state without slaves. his old age, when the cloud of reaction had settled darkly
it
his ideal Republic
he abolishes
upon
his
mind, he accepts
elaborate regulations for master.. The attitude of
an existing fact and makes the protection both of slave and of

it
as
his
opponents,
the sentimental
democrats, can perhaps be deduced from the beginning of
Euthyphro, or On Piety. The man who gives his name to that dialogue is satirized as a type of the pious and ultra-superstitious Athenian democrat. When Socrates
his dialogue,
meets him, Euthyphro
is
going to Athens to prosecute his
father for homicide, because the said father has caused, though not intentionally, the death of a slave who had killed
own
terms with his father
Euthyphro has been apparently on the best of he admits that he had great provocaand that the slave probably deserved to die. But he tion, will not allow a slave to be murdered any more than another
another.
;
:
man
at
and, what
'
and thought
MURRAY
more, though he expects to be laughed mad ', he is confident, if he can once get
is
18
a hearing, of winning his case. 1 The father, I should remark in passing, would not be put to death. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that our principal representative of ancient Greece
Aristotle
is,
like
Plato,
upon this question should be Aristotle. somewhat anti-democratic and,

;
unlike Plato, devoted to
common
sense.
It is his
common
that in
sense, perhaps, that obscures his vision most.
He saw
the existing state of society slavery was a necessary institution. Its abolition would have meant anarchy, perhaps famine.
And
Aristotle does his best to

'
show that the necessary
in-
stitution
is also just and according to nature '. It is the same line that was adopted by the fathers of the early Christian Church. 2 Some men are born to obey, others to rule. Put down a dozen Greeks in a barbarous country in a few months you will find the Greeks giving orders and the natives obeying them. But his arguments do not matter so much. The important thing is that he found it necessary to argue. Slavery could not, to a thoughtful Greek, simply rank as an accepted thing. No doubt Aristotle had a solid majority a majority composed of plain men who had behind him no intention of seeing their business hampered by philosophers, and doubtless of those same obscurantists who afterwards not a majority of philosophers prosecuted him for impiety nor idealist democrats. The two most influential schools, Cynics and Stoics, stood on the other side. The popular
:
: :
appealed to the public with sentimental denunciations of the mmatural thing^ I do not in the least wish to deny that the slave-trade
in later antiquity
1
writers of the
New Comedy 3
assumed enormous importance in Greece. The slave-trade was largely in the hands of the maritime
Observe how Euthyphro extracts a high moral lesson from the most
*
:
revolting myths of Hesiod wrong-doing must be punished, however high the offender. Zeus did not spare even his own father.' 8 Of. Susemihl and Hicks, Ar. Politics, p. 24, n. 4.
8
Cf.
Anaxandrides,
fr.
4,
Philemon,
firorjffe
fr.
94 (Kock)
77
especially
how God
\(v$povs
8ov\ovs
('
ir6.VTas rfj <f)v<Tt,
&
nfTcirorjffw
Tr\covfia.
').
covetousness transformed them into slaves
GREECE AND WOMEN

cities, just
19
as in the seventeenth and eighteenth cenwas in the hands of England, and for the same reason because the slave-trade went with the general carrying trade.
Greek
turies it
Polybius counts
large
among
and
it
the
first
l
necessaries of a
life
for a
town
cattle
slaves \
Wheat
is
mentioned as
secondary.
of
men
stands to reason that, wherever one set have had absolute power over another, there must
of
And
have been cases
extreme cruelty.
One should remember,
however, that Athens, the most Greek part of Greece, was remarkable for her gentleness to the slave population. It was part of her democratic ideal. Her friends praise her,
her critics and enemies ridicule her, for making her slaves
2 indistinguishable from free men.
I think the
That is something. But main point which distinguishes Greece from other
ancient communities, here as elsewhere, is not something actually achieved, but something seen and sought for. In
and right down through the centuries
Greece alone men's consciences were troubled by slavery, of the decadence, when
the industrial slave-system ruled everywhere, her philosophers never entirely ceased protesting against what must have
seemed an accepted and inevitable wrong.
The Greeks were not
characteristically subjectors of
women.
They
are the
first
the subjection of
women.
nation that realized and protested against I speak, of course, of nations in
some state
of social complexity.
For in primitive agricultural
communities the
most ways as
women who worked in the fields were in On this question, again, I should free as men.
not lay stress on the evidence of the isolated reformer, We all know how Plato in the Republic preached the complete emancipation of women from all artificial restrictions whatever.
1
iv.
38 Upos
fJLtv
ray dvayicatas rov
fiiov x/>**'as
rd T
Opfâra
KO.L
rb
rSiv
cts
1
rds SovActas dyonevav (jca^drojv irXrjQos
odious language, certainly.
(friendly] of slaves,
For instance, [Xen.] Respub. Ath&n. i. 10 ff. (hostile) ; Dem. Phil. iii. 3 Plato, Rep. 563 B (satirical on the licence and self-confidence ; male and female, in a democratic state]. On the torture of slave
witnesses, see
Appendix B.
c 2
20

1
known
But some time before Plato other philosophers, and wellphilosophers, must have advocated the same ideas, because we find all the regular Woman's Right conceptions
' '
ridiculed in Aristophanes, considerably before the Republic can have been published. And there is this to observe, unless
my impressions deceive me Aristophanes, a strong conservative writing broad comedy for the public, seems quite to understand the ideas that he is handling. He treats them
:
in the least as things
as funny, as offering material for scurrilous jokes, but not unheard of or incomprehensible. He
understands his opponents better than, for instance, Mary Wolstonecraft was understood by the writers of the AntiJacobin.
Before Aristophanes, again, there was Euripides, the woman's case with as much persistency and more arguing than as much insight and eloquence as that of the slave.
Euripides was a genius too extraordinary to be useful as evidence of what his average contemporaries thought except,
;
indeed, of
what they must have thought
after he
had spoken.
But consider for a moment the whole magnificent file of heroines in Greek tragedy, both for good and for evil, ClytemPhaedra and Medea think of the amazing beauty of the Daughters of Ocean in the Prometheus, and of the Trojan Women in the play that bears their name. They are all of them free women, free in thought and in spirit, treated with as much respect as any of the male characters, and with far greater minuteness and sympathy. I doubt if there has ever, in the history
nestra, Antigone, Alcestis, Polyxena, Jocasta, even
:
of the world,
been a period, not even excepting the Elizabethan
age and the nineteenth century, when such a gallery of heroic women has been represented in drama. And such characters
1 1 strongly suspect, Protagoras. In Diog. Laert. iii. 37 and 57 a statement is quoted from Aristoxenus and Favorinus (no doubt using Aristoxenus) to the effect that almost the whole of the Republic was taken from
*
'
Protagoras's Antilogica.
true, theLysistrata (B.C. 41
Aristoxenus
1),
a good authority. If this is at all and perhaps the Eccleaiazusae (B.C. 392 or 389 ?),
is
must have been aimed at ideas of Protagoras, as the later Oynaecocratiae of Amphis and Alexis were aimed at those of the Republic. Cf. Plato,
Rep.
v. p.
457
b.
OTHER REMNANTS OF BARBARISM

existed. 1
21
cannot surely have sprung out of a society in which no free
women
The
of it is
third point
is
hard to discuss
fully,
but the explanation
very similar. A great deal of ancient unchastity comes for female slavery directly from the institution of slavery
:
form of the custom of prostitution.^ A great deal, was a mere relic from the animalism of pre-Hellenic again, As for the myths, their immorality arises mostly peoples. from some very simple misunderstandings. Every little valley community was apt to count its descent from some local ancestress and the tribal god, a being who was often imagined in shapes not human, as an eagle, a swan, or a river-bull. A
time came when these various local gods were gradually merged in the great Achaean master-god, Zeus. The process
was, in a worse
large
part, another
and perhaps on the whole
was a thoroughly good and progressive one but it had an unexpected result upon Zeus's reputation. It provided him with a collection of human consorts, and of strange disguises,
;
Attic Law, in many respects primitive, is markedly so with regard to women. A woman was always under the tutelage of the head of her family, who would as a rule be her father, or, on his death, her eldest brother. She thus had a constant protector against any maltreatment by her husband. The guardian could annul the marriage and take her home. She also had her own property. On the other hand, a bad guardian could torment a woman almost as much as a bad husband can now e. g. he could get money from the husband by threatening to annul the marriage. The father could transfer his right of guardianship to the husband, then the wife was under her husband's coverture ', as now. When he died,
:
under the coverture of the next head of her husband's family, or could be left by will to some person of her husband's and in A great deal of the Attic treatment practice no doubt her own choice. of women strikes one as exaggeratedly romantic. They were to be rulers of the hearth *. They blushed at the sight of a strange male. To lose his wife's esteem was the greatest blow that could befall an honourable man. (The man in question risked losing it by being caught hiding under a bed
fell
'
the wife either
to escape the tax-gatherer. Dem. Androt. 53.) Epicharmus the poet was actually fined, in Syracuse, for making a broad joke in the presence of his wife. One is reminded of the Attic vases in which men are freely caricatured
or treated realistically, but women always idealized. Family life must have been extremely correct, to judge by the rarity of cases or mentions
of adultery in
our rather plentiful law-court literature.
22
which caused much veil-drawing on the part of the religiously-minded and much open laughter among the profane. The same sort of explanation applies to those few elements in Greek myths or ritual which strike one as cruel. They are nearly all of them little hard deposits of ancient barbarity left in the outer strata of Hellenism. Take the Marsyas story.
The Greeks, when they penetrated to the town of Celaenae, deep

in the heart of Further Phrygia, found a local tradition how a native god had flayed alive the native hero or king, Marsyas. The origin of the myth is not certain. Dr. Frazer takes
Marsyas for one
of his primitive vegetation-kings,
who were
slain periodically as the harvest is slain,
and
till
their skins or
some
It
similar relic sometimes preserved
the next year. 1

;
may, again, be a remembrance of some Assyrian conquest when they conquered a place often expressed their satisfaction by flaying their prisoners alive. However that may be, the guides who showed the Greeks round Celaenae, wishing to call their, god by some name which would be inMost barbarian gods telligible, had called him Apollo. were either Apollo or Heracles. So the hideous story takes its place on the remote outskirts of Greek myth, a thing that was perhaps never believed, and would no doubt have been forgotten had not the academic sculptors of the fourth
for the Assyrians
use of the mythical flayed man to illustrate the distribution of the human muscles. It is the same with
' J
century
made
a dozen other cases.
Asiatic population kept divers beasts by burning
At Apamea, quite close to Celaenae, the up a very ancient rite of sacrificing them alive. The Syro-Greek Lucian
describes the business as something curiously barbarous and 2 These things are in no sense characteristically uncanny.
Greek. They are remnants of the state of things which the highest Greek civilization up to the end of the fifth century B.C., a small white-hot centre of spiritual life in a world of effortless
barbarism, tried to transform and perished in the attempt. 3

1 I
Atiis,
De Dea
1 will
Adonis, and Osiris, chap. v. Syria, 49. The same occurred at Patrae in Achaia.
Cf.
Pans,
vii. 18, 11.

I
not discuss a third view, the Greek as a Levantine.
Many
very
POETRY AND PROGRESS

It is
:
23
then from this point of view that I wish to discuss
certain parts of Greek poetry as a manifestation of the spirit of upward striving in man, which we roughly describe as Progress.
But here a further question suggests

and
itself.
I feel that
many among my
care most for art
poetry from
progresses
:
who hearers, especially perhaps among for poetry, will protest against regarding this point of view at all. Science, they will say,
those
:
but poetry does not. When we call a poem and that immortal, we mean that it is never superseded implies that poetry itself does not progress.
This doctrine, when rigidly held, is apt, I think, to neglect the very complex nature of most of the concrete works of One may gladly admit that the essential and unpoetry.
definable quality that
poetical,
is
we
call poetry,
the quality of being
thing in
seded,
Homer and
one of the eternal things in life. There is somethe Book of Job which cannot be super-
any more than the beauty of a spring morning or the sea or a mother's love for a child can be superseded. But, after all, this essential spirit has always to clothe itself in a body
and that body is made up of elements which and decay. All the intellectual elements of poetry are progressive. Wider fields of knowledge may constantly be thrown open to the poet. Beauty may be discovered in fresh places. There may be increased delicacy, or at least increased minuteness, of observation. There is, most important of all, a possibility of change in the emotions
of
some
sort,
admit
of progress
good writers make use of this conception, but I think that, if pressed, it is misleading. The much-abused modern Levantine owes his general bad name to habits which come chiefly from historical causes. He is shifty, servile, cowardly, because for centuries he has been held in subjection by somewhat ferocious and markedly unintellectual aliens. He has had to live by dodging. The ancient Greek was himself a ruler, and had on the whole the virtues and vices of rulers. The race elements are not the same either. The Levantine, mixed as he is, is not largely influenced by fair-
Even the geographical conditions, though changed, are psychologically different. What is now petty huckstering in obsolete sailing boats was then the work of great adventurers and leaders of men. So that its moral effect on the sea-folk was different. (I should add that, as far as my personal knowledge goes, I do not agree with the ordinary wholesale condemnation of the Levantines.
haired conquering Northerners.
physically not
much
24
which form the raw material of poetry. Wordsworth was not, perhaps, so great a poet as the Deutero-Isaiah, yet Wordsworth would not have howled for joy that The moun'
And, still more certainly, the Deutero-Isaiah would have been utterly incapable of taking any interest in the subjects of most of Wordsworth's poems. Poetry, in this way, caji both be
'.
tains should be molten with the blood of
Edom
taken as evidence
of the
comparative progress
of a society,
form a force in its progress. Indeed, the best poetry provides sometimes the strongest, because the most subtle and unsuspected, force and the most delicate, because the most living and unconscious, evidence. The conscious moralist often seems rather stupid and arbitrary he is
and can
also
certainly an unpopular character
and the conscious legislator
perhaps worse. The poet has over both of them the immense advantage that he is not trying to say what he believes to be good for other people, or what he believes that they believe
to be good for them, but loves most.
is
simply expressing what he himself
point.
But what I am most concerned with now is a rather different I want to suggest, first, that the mere interest in
progress in general is a possible source of poetical inspiration, a source quite as real and quite as poetical as any other. And secondly, that this particular source of inspiration
human
rather particularly strong in Greek poetry. Many critics speak as if for a poet to be interested in
is
progress was a sort of disgrace or a confession of prosiness. I disagree ; I think human progress may be just as much a true inspiration to a poet as the lust of the eye or the pride
there is very little Pindar and Sophocles, On the other just as there is little in Shakespeare or Chaucer. it is the very breath of life to Aeschylus, Euripides, hand,
life.
of
Of course
it is
not so to
all
poets
of it in the final stages of
Homer,
little in
and Plato,
Let
as
it is
to Shelley or Tolstoy.
me explain more exactly what I mean. You may remember the last work of Condorcet,
in hiding
written by
him
when condemned
to the guillotine.
He
first
THE APPRECIATION OF LIFE
25
intended to write an answer to his false accusers and a justificaAnd then, in the face of death, tion of his political career.
somehow seemed to him less important and he preferred to work upon the subject which he felt to be the greatest in the whole world, Le Progres de rEsprit
that discussion
:
Humain, The Progress of the Human Spirit. It is much the same subject, ultimately, as that of the enormous work projected by the late Lord Acton a history of Human
Freedom. An interest in this subject implies, I think, at the outset an intense feeling of the value, for good and ill, of being alive. Here we are, you and I and the millions of men
and animals about

bodies blown, as
it
us, the
innumerable atoms that make our
by mysterious processes somehow together, so that there has happened just now for every one of us the wonder of wonders, a thing the like of which never we have come to life and here we has been nor shall be
were,
:
stand with our senses, our keen intellects, our infinite desires, our nerves quivering to the touch of joy and pain, beacons
of brief fire, it
eternities
still
would seem, burning between two unexplored what are we to make of the wonder while it is
an
interest in
ours
There
is
here,
first,
human
life
as a whole,
and secondly, a desire to make it a better thing than it is. That is, we shall find two main marks of this spirit First, what is properly called realism though the word is so conI mean, a stantly misused that we had better avoid it. interest in life itself, and an aversion to unreality permanent or make-believe. (This is not inconsistent with an appreciation of the artistic value of convention. We shall have
:
opportunities of considering that point in detail.) Secondly, a keen feeling of the values of things, that some things are and good and others bad, some delightful, others horrible
;
a power of appreciating, like a sensitive instrument, the various degrees of attraction and repulsion, joy and pain. Here we run upon one of the great antitheses of life, and
one which,
or I
it
seems to me,
may
say,
by
largely solved by the progressive, the Hellenic spirit ; the antithesis between
is
26

on the other.
In real
life
and the full artistic and in literature these two spirits fight a good deal. But both, of course, are parts of one truth. If life is to be enriched and ennobled, you must first of all have an appreciation of life. A man who refuses to feel and enjoy life destroys it at its very heart.
asceticism or Puritanism on the one hand,
appreciation of life
On
the other hand, any strict Puritan can always point to
of wreckage produced by great appreciation of the joys of life, and also to a large amount of good safe living produced by the principles of avoiding pleasure, dulling the desires, and habitually pouring cold water into
an immense amount
your own and other people's soup, to take the Devil out of it '. There is plenty of opportunity for dispute here in
'
life. In speculation there seems to me to be none. The truth simply is that in order to get at one desirable end you have to sacrifice another. The artistic side of man insists
real
ipon the need of understanding and appreciating all good and desirable things the ascetic side insists on the need of a power to resist, a power even to despise and ignore, every
:
one of them,
lest
they should hinder the world in the attain-
ment of something better. The combination of these two, the appreciation of good - things and the power to refuse them, is characteristic of the
most scholars will admit that it is Greek civilization. The enand appreciation of life is too deeply writ on all joyment Greek poetry to need any illustration, though one might refer to the curious power and importance in Greek life of two words, KiAAos and 2o</>a, Beauty and Wisdom to the intensity of feeling which makes 'EATrfr, Hope, or To'A/za, the Love of Daring, into powers of temptation and terror rather than joy to the constant allegorizing and transfiguration of those two gods of passion, Dionysus and Eros. 1 But the Whether principle of asceticism was at least equally strong.
spirit of progress.
I think
also eminently characteristic of
we look
1
to precept or to practice, the impression
is
the same.
These points are excellently brought out in Cornford's Thucydides

xii, xiii.
Mythistoricua, chaps, ix,
PURITAN AND ARTIST

:
27
In practice a respectable ancient Greek allowed himself some but indulgences which a respectable modern would refuse
for the most part his was, by our standards, extraHippoordinarily severe and frugal. To take one instance. 1 crates, the great fifth-century physician, says in one passage
life
that many doctors object to their patients having more than but for his own part, one meal in the twenty-four hours he thinks that, though to most healthy people it makes no difference whether they have two meals or one, still some slow
:
digesters cannot stand persons are positively

;
more than
one, while other delicate

!
the better for two
Our healthy
and our invalids fall not far short of a persons have four dozen. All the great schools of philosophy, again, were in various degrees ascetic. The general admiration felt by the
ancients for every form of frugality and hardihood strikes one The praises of Sparta show us how as altogether extreme.
coupled with courage, sufficed in the popular to cover a multitude of sins. Yet Greek ascetijudgement The East took its cism is never like Eastern asceticism.
severity of
life,
asceticism in orgies, as
it
were
in horrors of self-mutilation,
bodily and mental, which are as repellent in their way as the corresponding tempests of rage or of sensuality. Greek asceticism, though sometimes mystical, was never insane. It was nearly always related to
strengthening of
virtue
in
some reasonable end, and sought the and mind, not their mortification. body
think, in this connexion, of that special
One cannot but
which the early Greeks are always praising, and failure which is so regretfully condemned, the elusive word which
feebly
translate
*
we
by
Temperance
',
Sophrosyne.
The
can only be seen by observation of its usage a point we cannot go into here. It is closely related to that old Greek rule of Mrjbtv ayav, Nothing too much, which seems to us now rather commonplace, but has in its
meaning
of sdphrosyne
time stayed so
It
is
many
like
blind lusts and triumphant vengeances.
something Temperance, Gentleness, Mercy; sometimes a tempering of dominant Innocence, never mere Caution
:
De
Vet.
Med. 10
p. 593,
novoauifiv and dpiarrjv are the alternatives.
28
emotions by gentler thought.
But its derivation is interesting.
The
adjective (T&fypw or (ractypaw is the correlative of oAoo</>/3o>y, a word applied in early poetry to wizards and dangerous
'
'OAoo'^pcoz; means 'with destructive thoughts', <*means with saving thoughts '. Plutarch,1 writing when the force of the word was dead, actually used this paraphrase to express the same idea. There is a way of thinking which destroys and a way which saves. The man or woman who is sophron walks among the beauties and perils of the world, and through all he feeling the love, joy, anger, and the rest has that in his mind which saves. Whom does it save ? Not him only, but, as we should say, the whole situation. It saves the imminent evil from coming to be.
people.
<j>puv
It
of
is,
is then in this light that I wish to consider certain parts Greek poetry as embodying the spirit of progress, 2 that of both feeling the value and wonder of life, and being
:
desirous to
make
it
a better thing
and
further, with that
purpose in view, as combining a spirit of intense enjoyment with a tempering wisdom, going into seas of experience steered
by Sophrosyne.
1
De
Tranquillitate,
474
vow
aoorrjpia <ppovovvra.
point of view the remarkable language of a Delphic Inscription of the second century B.C., in Bulletin de Corr. Hellenique, rots 'Ap(j>t1900, p. 96, conferring honours on certain Athenians: 'Edo
Cf. for this
KTvocriV
7Ti57)
ytyovtvot
KOI
avv(i\i\0at
TI\VL"TWV
avvoSov nap'
(Is
'AOrjvaiois
o~vnp&TjK
(TraOfts,
irp&Tov,
ILIV
&v
6 drjpos ciTravrcav rSiv tv di/Opajirots
dyaOwv dpx^yos Kara^/xfpoT^ra,

fjivarrjpiojv
ky
TOV 0rjpwoovs &iov fjiT7)yayev rovs dyOpwnovs
irapainos
8' ky^vrjOrj TTJS irpbs
d\\rj\ovs Koivtuvias, fiffayaywv rty TWV
irapaSoaiv Kal 8ia TOVTOJV irapayyei\as rots airaaiv

dvOpwrrots
77
irpos
tavrovs
XPW' *
1
KQ i
"fiffris,
on ntyiarov ayaOov ianv v tn 5^ r&v SoOlvruv vno TWV

'
... Decreed by the Amphictyons of Delphi: Whereas it was in Athens that a union of the craftsmen of Dionysus (i. e. tragic actors and poets) first arose and was gathered together; and whereas the People of Athens, the established leader in all human advance, first won mankind from the life of wild
irepl
0wv
ruv
a.v9pwiT(jjv VO^JLWV
Kal TTJS waidfias
beasts to gentleness ; and, by introducing the Mysteries and thereby proclaiming to the world that the greatest good for mankind is a spirit
of help and trust toward one another, hath been part maker of the co-operation of men with men, and of the laws given by the gods for the treatment of men and of education
' .
. .
II
THE MIGRATIONS: THE POLIS

IF we regard Greece as the cradle of European civilization, we cannot help some feeling of surprise at its comparative lack of antiquity. True, we have evidence of a civilization existing in Crete and the Islands of the Aegean as far back as the end
of the
j
*
Stone Age.
But, for one thing, our knowledge of this
civilization is scanty
and
conjectural,
inasmuch as
it
depends
upon our interpretation of the stones, not upon literature and, what is more important, it is emphatically not the civiliz tion that we call Greek. I do not mean only or especia
that the builders of the earliest Cretan palaces were, as as we can judge, of different race and language from the Gree
I
i
we know it, has few or marks that we associate with Hellenism. But of that hereafter. In any case there lies between the prehistoric palaces of Crete, Troy, or Mycenae, and the civilization which we know as Greek, a Dark Age covering at least It is in this Dark Age that we must really several centuries. mean that
this civilization, so far as
none
of the special
look for the beginnings of Greece.
same gap.
In literature and in archaeology alike we are met with the There is a far-off island of knowledge, or apparent
;
knowledge
then darkness
then the beginnings of con-
At Troy there are the remains of no less than six cities one above the other. There was a great city there in 2000 B.C., the second of the series. Even in the second city there was discovered a fragment of white nephrite, a rare stone not found anywhere nearer than China, and
tinuous history.
testifying to the distances which trade could travel and unconscious routes in early times. That city
by slow was degreatest
stroyed by war and
fire
and others followed.
The
30
of all

was the sixth
city,
which we
may
roughly identify with
the Troy of Greek legend. Of this city we can see the wide circuit, the well-built stone walls, the terraces, the gates, and
We have opened the treasure houses and tombs, and have seen the great golden ornaments and imports from the East. Then we see the marks of flame on the walls and afterwards what ? One struggling attempt at a seventh city a few potsherds to mark the passage of some generations of miserable villages and eventually the of the Greek town of New Ilion, many hundreds of years signs later and well within the scope of continuous history. It is the same in Crete. City upon city from prehistoric times onward flourishing and destroyed palace upon palace,
the flanking towers.
:
beginning with the first building of Cnossos, in a peculiar non-Hellenic architecture proceeding to those vast and
;
intricate foundations
a citadel, accumulation of
which Mr. Evans finds a palace, and a royal city round about, the growth and
in
many
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.
The ornamentation of the walls is there, telling of the rise and decay of a whole system of decorative art fragments of early religion, the Bull-God or Minotaur seated upon his
:
throne
the
'
horns of consecration
'
bristling
everywhere
the goddess, IToYj>ta Qrjp&v, Queen of Wild Beasts, a dove upon her head, now twined with serpents
in
now
;
bearing
sometimes
human
shape, sometimes a mere stone pillar erect between

:
is
her rampant lions sometimes a monstrous fetish. There the God of the Battle-Axe, that Labrandeus from whose
:
name
the fable of the labyrinth seems to have arisen l a often wears no shape at all, but exists simply in being his emblems, scores of which remain driven into the rock of
who
the Dictaean cave, ancient bronze axes overcrusted with a stalactite growth of stone, testifying to a worship forgotten
and uncomprehended.
1
There are porcelains reminding one
on the Labyrinth, Lecture V below, p. 127, note, and The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 107-32. He connects \af3v~ The pwOos with \avpa and \avptiov. (So, I believe, did Wiedemann.) catastrophe which I am specially considering is, of course, that of Late Minoan III \
See, however,
especially Burrows,
'
ii
THE PRE-HELLENIC REMAINS
31
of Babylon, ornaments from Egypt, marks of a luxurious king's court, a gaming table inlaid with gold and coloured
marbles,
close,
girls
women
acrobats, bull-fights, or perhaps,

*
if
we look
something more barbaric than bull-fights boys and thrown for the Bull of Minos to gore then flame on
'
:
the walls and evidences of calamity, a feeble pulsing of life outside the ruined palaces, and afterwards silence. Centuries
later
a new Crete emerges, a Dorian island, rigid, self-centred, uninfluential, in the full light of Greek history.
is
the same with the cities of the Argive plain, Mycenae and Tiryns. They possessed less importance, and were infit habited for a less vast stretch of history, than the cities of Cnossos and Troy. 1 But the treasures yielded to the excavator,
Mycenae, are very great in proportion to the town, and the historical problem is simpler. importance We all know the Mycenaean remains the Lion Gates, the earlier shaft graves, and the later vaulted graves the remains
especially in
of the
:
the skeletons in masks of gold, with their weapons, their drinking bowls, and sometimes the ashes of burnt sacrifice lying beside them. And in the end, as in
of
;
mummified kings
Troy and Cnossos, the marks

of
of flame
upon the
walls, traces
a dwindling population
still
hovering about the old town,

life
;
and quickly degenerating in the arts of civilized then a long silence.

4
and
Such
is
the evidence of the stones.

it.
And
that of literature
of
with | corresponds
tradition about
There
is
an extraordinary wealth
non king
of
what we may call the Heroic Age. AgamemMycenae and Argos, Priam king of Troy, and the
kings surrounding them, Achilles, Aias, Odysseus, Hector, Paris, these are all familiar household words throughout
later history.
the world.
silence
!
They are among the best-known names of But how suddenly that full tradition lapses into The Epic Saga I mean the whole body of tradition
;
which
f
represented in Epic poetry the Epic Saga can tell us about the deaths of Hector, of Paris, of Priam in its 1 Under Tiryns an earlier city has recently been discovered. See W.
is
Dorpfeld, Athen. Mitth. 1907,
32
later

forms
it
can give us
;
all
the details of the last destruction
of Troy.
Then no more
more strange
goes
except a few dim hints, for instance,
about the descendants of Aeneas.

It is
in the case of
Mycenae and Sparta.

:
Agamemnon
son Orestes
:
home
in the full blaze of legend
he
is
murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, and avenged by his But so far we have witnesses by the score.
?
What happened to Mycenae after the death of Aegisthus ? No one seems to know. There seems to be no Mycenae any more. What happened in Sparta after Menelaus
then
and Helen had taken their departure to the blest ? There is no record, no memory.
In Crete there
is
islands of the
less
tradition altogether.
all
One great
Minos
name, Minos, forms the centre of

is
Cretan legends.
Agamemnon
never quite flesh and blood, like the Homeric heroes, or Achilles. He is almost like that more than
'
ruler shadowy personage, Creon, whose name means and who appears in all the myths of the mainland whenever ruler ', and nothing more, is wanted. We meet a mere
'
'
Minos in
many different characters. He is the just
generations,
in
many
different
Underworld, the son of Zeus, or, still more august, not the son but the gossip or familiar friend of Zeus. 1 Again, he is the bloody tyrant
*
judge of the
'
of the
Theseus myth, who gives seven youths and seven

his
:
man-slaying Bull. He is the boaster of the Bacchylides poem he is the mere royal father or equally royal husband of the Cretan heroines Pasiphae, Ariadne,
maidens to
Phaedra.
After Minos, what
is
there
Idomeneus
in the
Iliad,
a secondary figure regarded with much respect, and of course alive, since he is treated by a poet who makes everything
cf. 319 D. See Plato, Minos niy<i\ov oapiar^, T 179 I suspect that Minos was a name like Lecture V, p. 127. * Pharaoh ' or Caesar ', given to all Cretan kings of a certain type, and, further, that the king was held to be the personification or incarnation of the Bull-God. As to the evidence for a Minos existing at different dates, Prof. Burrows remarks that the Parian Marble puts Minos in the fifteenth century B.C. and also in the thirteenth, and that Diodorus (iv. 60) and Plutarch (Vit. The*. 20J tell a similar story.
1
Atoy
below,
'
ii
THE PRE-HELLENIC TRADITIONS
33
.alive.
But even Idomeneus and his squire Meriones have 1 begun to be shadowy, and after them there is nothing. In Thebes, as in Troy, the tradition is more intelligible
because it explicitly leads up to a catastrophe. Many problems require to be cleared up about the Theban traditions, even after Bethe's work upon the subject. The pre-historic
we said above, are not prominent or remarkable, no doubt, because the place was never left for a long chiefly, time deserted. It is with Thebes as with Argos, with Athens, with the many sites of towns on the coast of Asia Minor and
remains, as
the Riviera.
Continuous occupation has destroyed gradually
and surely the remains of every successive period. But the Theban traditions, as preserved in literature, are particularly rich, and they lead up clearly to our Dark Age or Period of Ignorance. There is first a strange race, Cadmeans, the people
Cadmus, the Eastern Man,' 2 in possession of the city. The tradition is clearly not of their making, for they are credited with all the crimes and pollutions in the calendar especially sexual crimes, which people always impute to their enemies and not to themselves. Three generations of the Cadmeans, Laius, Oedipus, and the sons of Oedipus, between them commit pretty well all the crimes that can be committed inside a family. Unnatural affections; child murder,
of
:
father murder, incest, a great deal of hereditary cursing, a double fratricide, and a violation of the sanctity of dead bodies when one reads such a list of charges brought
against
to
1
any
tribe or people, either in ancient or in
times, one can hardly help concluding that
annex
their land. 3
And
this
modern somebody wanted was doubtless the case. The

'
Crete had formerly been 'emptied by an expedition Cf. Hdt. vii. 171. Minos to Sicily. Then 'in the third generation after the death of After the return from Troy there came Minos came the Trojan wars,. famine and pest slaying both man and beast, and Crete was made empty i. e. the Dorian tribes a second time. Then came the present Cretans 'and inhabited it, together with the survivors.' 2 Heb. Dip qedem, the east. Greek tradition calls them Phoenicians ', but it is not clear what that term exactly denotes. See, after Beloch and
of
. ,
.
'
'
Berard, Burrows, op.

3
cit.,
p. 141
f.
There
is
also extant a simpler version, before the self-defensive slanders
34
saga gives us
full details up to the quarrel of Eteocles and and the Expedition of the Seven Greek Champions. Polynices The seven were defeated so far we hear all at length. Then much more briefly, with much less reality, we are told that That their sons made another expedition and took Thebes. is, the citadel of the Cadmeans eventually fell, and nothing
:
more
It
of
is is
said or
known.
we turn our eyes in the vast field who fought at Thebes and are known their sons are just known by name or perhaps Troy
the same wherever
Greek legend.
;
The
'
heroes
'
little
more:
Diomedes, Aias, Odysseus, Calchas, Nestor,
how
it
fully the tradition describes their doings,
and how
silent
becomes
after their deaths
Let us consider these destroyed cities a little closer. We can perhaps make out both the kind of civilization on which For their greatness rested, and also the causes of their fall.
observe this
:
though we can see in some cases from the

cities
evidence of the stones that these

violent end,
it is
came
at last to a
by no means clear that it was any definite of war which really destroyed the Aegean civilization. shock There is no tradition at all that the realm of Minos was sacked in war l no real tradition of the sack of Mycenae. And even in the cases of Troy and Thebes, the testimony is susThe Epos must say that Troy eventually was taken, picious. but the Epos knows that Achilles did not take it, but failed and was slain. A son of Achilles, a mere replica of Achilles,
:
has been invented to come afterwards and take

the Iliad as
it
it.
Of course
but
tvttt'
it
stands implies the future fall of the city, need not have done so in an earlier form. Nor need
in
now
which the heroes are slain at Thebes simply M\UV an honest cattle raid. 1 Mr. J. L. Myres reminds me of Plutarch's story of Tauros the seacaptain ', who was the real lover of Pasiphae, and the sea-fight off Cnossos. This is possibly a very faint echo of a real tradition ( Vit. Thes. xix and preceding capp.). There would be no great siege in any case, since Cnossos and Phaestus were open unfortified cities their fall would follow quickly on the destruction of the Minoan fleet. Dr. Evans actually doubts whether the eack of Cnossos was the work of a foreign army at all (JB. S. A. xi. p. 14).
had been developed,
OtSiTToSao (Hes. Erga, 162), in
'
IT
HOW
fall of
DID THE CITIES FALL

Agamemnon
35
the Odyssey.
The
disastrous returns of the Greek heroes
and the
the house of
point rather to an
unsuccessful expedition than to a great conquest. And how does it happen, one may ask, that so many Greek lays were based on the subject of Wraths ', or quarrels between leading,
'
-chiefs,
between
Agamemnon and
Achilles,
Odysseus and Aga-^

?
memnon, Odysseus^nd
it
Aias, Achilles an'cr Odysseus
Does
from Prof. Bury as if there some great failure ? At any rate the actual tale of the Sack of Troy, though immensely influential in later literature, does not seem to be recorded in any very And even incidents which have a early form of the saga.
not look
I take the suggestion for
was need
of
an excuse
special air of verisimilitude about them, like the stratagem of
the Wooden Horse, 1 may represent only a brilliant afterthought I lay no stress on this of what ought to have been done.
point, except to suggest that it is curious, if the war really ended in success, that the great national poem in its early
the success, but only of disastrous with an incident which is well calculated Returns', together to excuse failure.
forms should not

'
tell of
Exactly the same thing

Ition.
is
the case with the Theban tradi-
great expedition against Thebes is well known to the Epos, that of the Seven Chieftains, led by the far-famed Adrastus. That expedition, we are told, was defeated and
all
the seven slain.

the end.
'
'
Only,' the story adds,
'
Thebes did
fall in
people who came afterwards took it.' The names of these later comers are not very certain. They are only the Ekgonoi or Epigonoi ', 2 the men-born-after ', more shadowy even than Pyrrhus-Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. The general result seems to me to suggest that,
'
'
Some
'
in the first place, the
Epic tradition of the Greeks knew of
certain heroic
knew much and Cadmean Thebes had ceased

1
expeditions against Thebes and Troy, but also of their defeat ; and secondly, this tradition had later to be combined with the fact that in reality Troy
to be.
Can we
I suggest that
it
may refer
to a siege tower of the Assyrian type.

'Eiriyovot is of
see anything The
Trojan Women, p. 86. 2 "Etcyovoi, Eur. Suppliants, 1224.
course the usual name.
36

?
in the historical conditions
which makes such an hypothesis
probable
I suggest, to put it briefly, that these great fortress-cities depended for their greatness entirely upon commerce, and
that during the period of persistent barbarian invasions this
commerce was destroyed. They resisted successfully the direct shock of war but were gradually undermined by
;
poverty. All of them, as a matter of fact, are situated at the junctions of important trade routes. Crete, for instance,
a rough and mountainous island, credited by Strabo with some fruitful glens ', is geographically, in Dr. Evans's phrase
'
J.
H. 8.
xiv), 'the stepping-stone of continents,' lying in the
mid route between west and east,1 between south and north. The lines from Phoenicia and the great Babylonian hinterland,
from Egypt, from Libya, all tended to join at Crete on the way to the West, the Northern Aegean, or the Black Sea. 2 Some centralizing power then must have arisen in the island, and the maritime trade of such harbours as Kydonia, Itanos,
Cnossos.
Hierapytna, served to support the great central city of Thebes, again, as Strabo explains, commanded the
roads between three seas, the Northern Aegean, the Southern Aegean, and the Corinthian Gulf.
But
where
is
let
it is
us consider the point more in detail in two cases not so easily seen.
Mycenae, as M. Victor Berard has well explained, is what called in Turkish a Dervendji that is, a castle built at a juncture of mountain passes for the purpose of levying taxes on all traffic that goes through. There is the rich plain
;
of
it
Argos opening southward to the sea.

are mountains
;
beyond them the
At the north of plain of Corinth and
Sikyon opening on the Corinthian Gulf. Among these mountains, at the north-east corner of the Argive valley, with no sea near, and no arable land anywhere about it,
stands this isolated castle of Mycenae, thickly walled and
See also Hogarth's address to the Royal Geographical Society, 1906. road running north and south has since been discovered. * See also Berard, Lea Pheniciens et VOdyssie, p. 400, from Ephorus. 225 f. Compare, for what follows, pp. 11 f. (Mycenae) and 79 f. (Troy).
1
A
i.
ii
POSITIONS OF MYCENAE
to the teeth.
it
AND TROY
37
live,
armed and why
hard to see how such a place could needed such military preparations, until we
It
is
observe that it forms the meeting-point of a very ancient system of artificial roads, cut and built of stone, and leading from the Argive plain to the Corinthian, from the southern sea to the northern. If Mycenae stood alone, she formed a sort of robber stronghold, which lived by levying blackmail
on
all
the trade that passed.
But almost
certainly she did

is
not stand alone.

as well as of
In
Homer Agamemnon
king of Corinth
^"
Mycenae and Argos. That is to say, Agamemnon's main work was to keep open a safe trade route between the northern and the southern seas. He had a port on the south, a port on the north, a strong fortress in the middle of the route, and he had also cut solid roads through the
mountains for
traffic
to pass.
They were not wide
roads.
there*
Not wide enough
for a carriage, only for a mule.
And
of
fore, in case traffic should be pressed, he
onef^perhaps for northward traffic He would also, as a matter of fact,
them^f and one for southward.
made two
command
the
traffic
eastward and westward, from the isthmus of Corinth to Elis
and Messenia. M. Berard's explanation of Troy is even more instructive. It has to be modified by the observed fact that Troy does not show great affinities with the islands, and does show affinities with its own hinterland. But I still consider it, in itself, true. Six cities were built on that particular site, and six destroyed. There must have been some rare attraction about the place, and some special reason for destroying the cities Greek legend, in speaking of the destruction of built there. Agamemnon, always remembered that it had been Troy by
destroyed before, though it ran all the previous expeditions into one when old Telamon rose from his rest in Salamis, and gave himself to Heracles
For the wrecking of one land only, Of Ilion, Ilion only, Most hated of lands. 1
1
definite words)
Eur. Troades, 806 (sentiment of the whole passage, rather than any cf. 1241 Tpoia re it6\wv eK/cpirov fju
:
38

Now we know
that there was a vast body of trade always
passing up the Hellespont, joining all Mediterranean civilization with that of the Black Sea. Obviously a city com-
but Troy does not manding this trade would grow rich seem at first sight to be in the right position for commanding it. The older city, Dardania, had lain higher up on Mount But as Ida, the Iliad tells us (T 218), in safe retirement. the Trojans grew stronger, or as they discovered a more
:
tempting source of wealth, they ventured nearer the sea. Yet even so Troy lies some miles inland on the slopes of a
commanding only a narrow swampy plain with sea at each end of it. In modern times such a position is not of much worth. But in the conditions of ancient seafaring it was
hill
priceless.
Down the Bosphorus and the Hellespont there blows an almost incessant wind and there flows an extraordinarily
strong current. If you bathe in the sultry heat down below Tenedos, near Mytilene, you may find yourself suddenly in swift and almost icy water sweeping straight from Russia.
This current is at its strongest just off Cape Sigeum, the promontory in front of Troy. At the present time small steamers have some trouble in passing there, and sailing ships can be seen waiting by the score under the lee of Tenedos, till by utilizing stray puffs of favourable wind they can tack round that difficult cape, and proceed by hugging the eastern
shore.
In ancient times, when boats were small and voyages short, they simply did not attempt to go round the Cape. They disembarked their cargo at the southern end of the
narrow swampy plain, carried it across on mules or asses, and embarked it again on the other side. And those mules passed right under the walls of Priam and Laomedon, ancL
paid taxes as they passed. Priam's misfortunes were so great that tradition is kind to him. But the perjuries and extortions
Was it simply ring loud in legend. the Hellespont was too oppressive to be because the toll at tolerated, that all maritime Greece felt involved in the
of
Laomedon
oppression,
and volunteered to destroy the
blackmailing
ii
COMMERCIAL EMPIRES
39
citadel again
and again ? Or was it, more simply still, that the position was so valuable that one band after another
of
warriors, Thracians, Dardans, Troes, Teukri, Phrygians, Achaeans, fought for the possession ? There are many problems still waiting solution about these
northern
fortified centres of
exchange,
if
may
so call them.
How
far did they
form a uniform empire or federation ? Was Mycenae normally an outpost of Crete or an enemy of Crete ? What relation did either of them bear towards Troy, or towards the prevailing powers in Asia ? Of what race or How far was there a conscious races were their kings ?
between the Minoan or Island race with its seacoast settlements and the less advanced masses of Anatolian
difference
6
'
or
'
Hittite
'
peoples of the hinterlands
I think, perfectly clear that this
what we
call
Greek.
Its
? In any case it is, Aegean civilization was not language was not Greek. Its art,
though we can
recognize in
it
many
of the elements that
went to the making of Greek Art, was in itself not Greek. As a matter of fact there were no Greeks in the world in those days, any more than there were, let us say, Englishmen before the Angles came into Britain, or Frenchmen before the Franks invaded Gaul. The Greek people was a compound of which the necessary constituents had not yet come together. We must recognize, however, that the existence of such rich and important centres, dependent entirely upon seaborne commerce, argues both a wide trade and a considerably high and stable civilization. We must not forget that piece of white nephrite which came to Troy all the way from China. And we must by no means regard the masters of these cities Commerce as mere robber chieftains or levyers of blackmail. and Aegean commerce lived dies if it is too badly treated and flourished for an extremely long time.
;
These empires, if we may call them by so large a name, were broken up by migrations or invasions from the north. In early times, so Thucydides tells us, all Hellas was in a We hear of all sorts of migrant tribes state of migration.
;
40

and Pelasgoi
;
n
;
of Hellenes, Achaioi,
of Carians
Most of all we hear of the great migration of somewhere about 1000 B.C. It is the habit the Dorians, of Greek tradition to remember chiefly the last of a series of It remembers the last migration, as it collected the events. last of the lyric poets, the last tragedies, the last form of the Epos. And modern research shows us that there were many successive waves of migration from the north and north-west.
1
Minyae and the rest.

;
of
of the sons of Deucalion, Ion, Pelops,
and Leleges Danaus,
They were and the Greek that we know is really their Aryan speech They seem to have been, to a preponderant language. tall and fair, brachy cephalic, warlike, uncivilized. extent,
of
;
We know a fair amount about these immigrants.
They worshipped Zeus. They used, in the later streams of invasion at any rate, iron weapons, and round metal shields, and fastened their cloaks with fibulae or safety-pins. The
'
'
description of the Thracians given by Herodotus in his fifth book would probably have been true some six centuries
earlier of all these
way, who has helped
invading Northerners. Professor Ridgeso greatly our understanding of the two
elements in early Greek life, has rather unfortunately oversimplified his statement of the case by speaking as if there were one homogeneous invading race, and one homogeneous
race of aboriginals.
north,
He
operates with
c
'
Achaeans
'
from the
is
and aboriginal
Pelasgians
'.
The terminology
convenient, but perhaps dangerously convenient, since neither part of the antithesis is really simple.
2 First, for the Pelasgians.
1
The
Pelasgi
seem to have been

shields
Ao>/>oi>
pos.
= hand The Lambda

'
',
as
(X)
Homer's 5c/caScupos, which served as the sign on the Spartan

;
in
Hesiod's
is
not likely to have been originally a letter of the alphabet perhaps it was a picture of a hand in profile pointing downwards with the thumb sticking out. Some of the pictograms for hand are like that. I suspect that the Dorians were the Tribe of the Hand ', and that Swpov, gift ', is a thing handed or a buona mano.
'
'
'
'
ancient
the Pelasgians see especially Myres in J.H.S. xxvii, who traces the to Ephorus. Pelasgian theory Pelasgians are mentioned at Dodona, n 233 (apparently), Hes. fr. 225 (K), and Hdt. Pelasgiotis, B 681 ff.
'
'
:
On
(apparently),
and
later writers
Hellespont, see Myres on
B 840 ff.
Hdt.
ii
THE MIGRATIONS
THE PELASGOI
'
'
41
x a definite set of tribes, with northern affinities, whom we find first in places like Dodona, the Hellespont, and Pelas-
they move under pressure from above, in various in Crete, in Argos, in Attica, especially and parts of Greece permanently in the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, where two
giotis, then, as
;
inscriptions in a
and
still
non-Greek language have been discovered, await interpretation. They called their citadels
'
From their towers, or Tyrseis ', they sometimes had the name Tyrseni. But whether they had any connexion with that maritime people in Western Italy who were called
'Larisa'.
by themselves Rasna, by others Tursci

Greeks themselves
'
or Etrusci,
by the
Tyrseni
1
',
that
is
a point on which I
venture no opinion. Clearly the name of this particular tribe is not strictly suitable for denoting the pre-Hellenic races in general. The Pelasgi were probably at one time the
most formidable enemies

convention
It
may
Yet the of the aboriginal races. as well stand, until we can find a better.
' '
seems that the Pelasgi were, at some very early time, before the arrival of the Achaeans upon the scene, a very
dominant or conspicuous people. And the name Pelasgian was in antiquity, as well as in modern times, applied freely as a general term to denote the whole pre-Achaean period and the races then inhabiting Greece. 2 This is a perfectly normal phenomenon in the history of
race-names. 3
'
All
Europeans to the Saracens used to be

c
Franks
'
;
all
Greeks to the Asiatics were

'
sons of
Yawan
' ;
just as in Italy they were

i.
Graeci
'
from the name

294)
is
of a certain
Lemnos in Homer (A 594, 57, ii. 51. people, the Sinties. 1 I quote, however, a note of Professor
occupied by Hephaistos'
'
Burrows (Crete,
p. 109)
Professor
Conway informs me that there is little doubt on the matter, as will be shown " " by Professor Skutsch's forthcoming article Etruskische Sprache in PaulyWissowa, and by the inclusion of the inscription in the Corpus Inscr. Etruscartim. See, too, Conway's own article in the forthcoming new edition of the Encyd. BritS a Thucydides says as much, i. 3. 3 Again, though both Wessex and Mercia were bigger than the kingdom of the Angles, and England was unified under the headship of Wessex, yet the country as a whole took its name from the province which lay nearest the countries opposite.' J. W. M.
*
42

much
'
n
;
Epirot tribe which was

in Greece itself they
in
touch with South Italy

'
were
Hellenes
from the name
of a
dominant tribe in South Thessaly. It is safe to use Pelasgian in the two senses if we carefully avoid confusing them. The little that we can make out about the race affinities of the real aborigines is based chiefly on the names of the places which they inhabited. All over Greece we find the
towns, mountains, rivers, and, curiously enough, the flowers,
called
by non-Greek names.
Names
like Larisa, Corinthos,
Zakynthos, Hyakinthos, Olympos, Arisbe, Narkissos, are no more Greek than Connecticut and Poughkeepsie or Alabama
are English, or
Morbihan and Landes are French.
And an
examination of these non-Greek place-names, as carried out with great ability by Kretschmer and Fick, leads to a result
which
is
on general grounds
satisfactory.
There
is
a great
system of place-names in a language still unknown to us, which reaches across the mainland of Greece, the islands of the Aegean, and practically the whole immense peninsula a language which is clearly not Semitic, of Asia Minor
:
and in the opinion of most scholars not Aryan either, and which must therefore have belonged to that pre-Semitic population of Asia Minor, of which the most distinguished 1 Anthropologists and measurers of group is the Hittite.
1 So Fick and Kretschmer. Conway, however, argues that this language was Indo-European. (B. 8. A., viii. pp. 125 ff., x. pp. 115 ff.) He starts from the three short inscriptions found at Praesus, a town said to be Eteocretan ',
*
in the east of the island.
They are comparatively late, saec. vi to iv, in but in an unknown language which bears affinities to Venetic and Osco-Umbrian. EteoConway takes this language as cretan and Eteocretan as = Minoan. For an historical criticism of this view
Greek
letters,
see Burrows, Crete, pp. 151 ff. It is rash to decide till we
may now
know more of the Hittite language, which H. Winckler's excavations during the summer of 1906 at Boghaz-Ko'i in Cappadocia have resulted in (1) a proof that BoghazKoi was the capital of the Hittite kingdom (2) the discovery of the state
soon occur.
:
archives, consisting of
many large complete tablets and over 2,000 fragcorrespondence from Hittite vassals and from Egypt. They are mostly of the same date as the Tel-el-Amarna letters, and contain the Assy ro- Baby Ionian version of the treaty between Ramses II and the Hittite king, Chetaser. The writing is cuneiform, but the language Hittite.
mentary ones
As Babylonian ideograms and determinatives are freely used, decipherment
ii
THE MIGRATIONS
THE ACHAIOI
'
43
there were in the Aegean lands before any Northerners arrived on the scene two distinct races a dark long-headed Aegean race with littoral habits, never and another dark short-skulled going f jfcr from the sea Armenoid race, inhabiting the highlands on both sides. How
skulls tell us that
;
far these races
how
far the ruling
were conscious of their respective unities, Minoans were racially distinct -from the
surrounding peoples, are questions which we need not at present face. The Aegean world was certainly divided into
little tribes and communities, which no doubt fought and hated one another as gladly as so many Celtic clans. But the remains show that, generally speaking, they were
many
homogeneous in culture. And we shall, with this apology, speak of them in future under one name as pre-HellenJc or
Aegean.
1
And opposed
'
to these aboriginal or quasi-aboriginal races
stand the invaders from the north, Professor Ridgeway's
Achaeans
'.
The case
of the
is
exactly similar.
tribes
;
The Achaeans
but the name
formed one
many immigrant
spread beyond the bounds of the tribe and was used by the Aegean peoples to denote the northern races in general.
Homer it seems to include all the warriors, of whatever blood, who have fallen under the lead of the northern chiefBut we should not forget that there were many tains. branches of the invasion. From the forests of Central Europe, guided by the valleys and mountain passes towards Dodona
In
and towards Thessaly, came divers Achaeans and Hellenes more to the east came tribes of the same blood, afterwards
;
is
hoped
for.
(It is to
be remembered that Jensen, Hittiter und Armenier
(1898), took Hittite to be an Indo-European language and the prototype of Armenian.) See the note in O. Weber, Die Literatur der Bdbylonier und Assyrier (Erganzungsband ii of Der Alte Orient), p. 275. I owe the
above information to Miss

Dec. 15, 1906.
J. E. Harrison.
Burrows
cites Or. Litteraturz.
1 The question of Semitic and Egyptian influence or settlement among these aborigines can be left aside no whole nation came in from the south or east as there did from the north.
:
44
called

Macedonian and Thracian.
1
One
of these Thracian
Bhryges, crossed into Asia, like the Cimmerii and the Gauls after them, and drove a wedge of northern and Indo- Germanic population into the midst of the native
tribes, the
'
Hittites
'.
If
any one
ception of these racial
inclined to over-simplify his conmovements, he might find a useful

is
warning in a study of Phrygia, or of one part of Phrygia, the Troad. If we take the various invaders of the Troad in early
Greek times, we find first the Phryges or Bryges their name seems to have kept the old Indo- Germanic b h which the Greeks could not pronounce. Also the Troes or Trojans
'
' '
:
'
also a
of of
branch
of the Paiones,
;
who gave
their
name
to a part
Northern Macedonia
the Paiones, the Dardanoi, led

;
Aeneadae some of their a tribe which disappeared early, called Phorkyntes or Beresome Thracians, not further specified, from the kyntes and lastly the Trares. Those are the northern Chersonnese invaders only. The races already settled in the land seem to have included a main body of Leleges, a race generally known as aboriginal further south, in Caria some Pelasgi, who had probably come from Thrace Gergithes and Teucri,
;
some northern neighbours by a royal tribe called southern neighbours, the Mygdones
further,
the latter being perhaps a royal tribe and, if as well. believe the Iliad, Lycians and Cilicians
;
we
are to
And how
many
other tribes
may
there have been, whose
names are not
preserved to us ? That is the sort of complex of races which existed in one small piece of territory.
And meantime,
pressure of other
further to the west of Greece,
came the
by the
till
and more barbarous peoples,
called
general name
of
of Illyrians,
who
eventually occupied the regions
Albania and Epirus, and resisted Greek civilization
long after classical times. But, to get rid of these names and come closer to reality,
1
O. Hoffmann, Die Makedonen, ihre Sprache
und
confirms Kretschmer's results.

Thessalian, but influenced
'
The language
'
is
ihr Volksthum (1906), a dialect of Greek, akin to
The
non-Greek Phrygo-Thracian and Illyrian. Mac. /3 7 5 for Greek x 0. The eastern wing of the Migrations seems to have been the earlier.
by
chief
mark
is,
of course,
</>
U
Very
PROCESSES OF MIGRATION
different,
45
like
?
what are we to conceive these invasions to have been

I think, in different circumstances.
It is
almost a rule in history, that before any definite invasion of a new territory there is a long period of peaceful penetration.
The whole process of the northern migrations must cover a period of many centuries. In the beginnings it is not an army that comes to invade. It is some adventurers or traders
who come and

Or again,
it is
settle
some mercenaries who are invited
in.
a few families
who move
little
further
up
a mountain, or a little on the other side of a pass, breaking up new land where it happens to be unoccupied. For a great
part of the process, on the mainland at least, these may have been the normal modes of advance on the one hand,
:
a gradual increase of northern soldiers and northern officers in the armies of the Aegean powers on the other, a slight
;
change in the possession of farms and pasture grounds, in which the stronger race steadily got more and the weaker
But violence certainly came in, and in the later stages the very extreme of violence. While there was room for both races there was perhaps little or no fighting. But a time
less.
always came when there was no room. Of that later. One thing seems clear. While the great masses of the
various northern peoples were steadily pushing downwards on the mainland, small bodies of chiefs or adventurers seem
to have gone forth into the Aegean region to carve out for themselves little empires or lives of romance. They were
'invited in', as Thucydides puts
it
(i.
3),
as allies or mer-
cenaries or condottieri in the various cities.

condottieri,
And,
like other
they had a way
of
1 occupying vacant thrones. in their time. About the year 1035 Robert Guiscard set out
marrying native princesses and It is just what the Normans did

as a pilgrim, with only one
from Normandy, so Gibbon
tells us,
1 As we shall see later, there is ground for suspecting that descent in these communities went by the female side, so that to marry the queen = Creusa, or princess was the normal way of becoming a king. So Xuthus Oedipus = Jocasta, Pelops = Hippodameia, Menelaus and Agamemnon = the
daughters of the native king Tyndareus, &c.

in Frazer, Kingship, chap.
viii.
Cf. the
numerous instances
46

c
He went south, and ended by becoming King of Under his command the peasants of Calabria assumed the character and the name of Normans.' Just so Agamemnon's followers assumed the character and the name of Achaeans. 1 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. you could find little bands of the Northmen established at various points of the Mediterranean, as kings and nobles among an
companion.
Calabria.
inferior population.
Just so it seems to have been in the and fourteenth centuries B.C. with these other invading Northmen. The great citadel of Troy had a northern king, a Phrygian. Similarly in all the other centres of Aegean power we seem to find Northmen ruling. Minos indeed was aboriginal, and even divine but the tradition makes him first into a friend ', then into a son, of the Achaean Zeus 2 and Idomeneus, the Cretan
thirteenth
'
:
chief of the Iliad,
is
clearly counted
among
the Achaeans.
Mycenae and Corinth are under the Achaean Agamemnon. He is the very type and king of the Achaeans but it is interesting to notice that his family tree is derived from
:
Phrygia.
If
this
is
right,
Agamemnon
belonged to those
1 Gibbon, cap. Ivi. There is a good account of these sons of Tancred in Demolins, Comment la Route cree le Type Social, ii. pp. 313 ff. Just so with the Dorians Halicarnassus was founded by lonians from Trozen with It counts as Dorian. Dorian leaders. Hdt. vii. 99 Strabo, p. 653, &c.
'
'
:
So, too,
dialect
Tarentum
lapavra
5* air^Ktcrav
Parthenioi)
is
'o\Ki<jr^s 5
yevTo
'SnapTiaTTjs &a\av0os,
pev AaifcSat/tGwcu (Perioikoi and The Paus. x. 10. 6.

is
Achaean = Perioikian, but the colony

'
called
'
Dorian
'.
So
the
2
3
'
Spartan
See above, Pelops
army
p. 32.
at Thermopylae, 300 Spartans in 5,000 odd, besides
Helots.
Meister, Dorer
und
Ach'/er, p.
22
ff.
is nearly always a Phrygian (Soph. Ajax, 1292 Hdt. vii. 8 and Bacchylides, vii. 53, &c.). Pindar says a Lydian(0. i. 24, ix, 9). Afterwards the ideas are confused, and he is merely Asiatic. (So Thuc. i. 9.) Observe that his alleged ancestor, Tantalus, was not originally a son of
;
11
Zeus, but an oapiarrjs like Minos and Agamemnon's descent from

&c.).
i.e.
not an Achaean, but a native prince,

fiction (Eur. Or. 9
;
him a
Pind. 01.
i.
43,
Tantalus also appears as the
first
husband
of Clytemnestra, slain
by Agamemnon (Eur. Iph. Aul. 1150). His being non- Achaean explains why Zeus sends him to Tartaros with Sisyphus, Salmoneus, Tityos, Ixion. (See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 336 ff.) Hence I do not press the
connexion of Tantalus with came from Troy.
Ilus, as
meaning that the Pelopidae actually
ii
THE NORTHMEN AS RULERS

:
47
same Northmen who had come eastward by way of Thrace and when he led an army against Priam to occupy Troy
he fought in a specially close sense against his own kindred. The later Greek imagination liked to think of Troy as an
and to make the Trojan War a type of the agelong struggle of West and East, Aryan and Semite. There are
Asiatic city,
symptoms
of this
tendency even in the later parts
of the
Iliad (P 88,
48).
But
it
is
clear in the earliest records
that the Trojan chiefs are of the same race as the Achaeans.
There
is
no difference
of language.
'
The
difference of language
'
comes in between the Trojans and their own allies, the Carians with barbarous tongue and the various peoples in whom
there was not one language nor one voice \ l Their mode Their of fighting is exactly the same as that of the Achaeans.
'
gods are the same.
Nay,
if
we examine
carefully into that
question the result is rather curious. According to Homer the three typically Achaean gods are the trinity, Zeus, Apollo, and Athena. 2 And this trinity in the Homeric poems must
have been originally on the side of Troy Apollo fights for the Trojans. Zeus is constantly protecting them, openly putting off their evil day, and rebuking their enemies. Athena
!
indeed appears in our present Iliad as the enemy of Troy. Yet it is to her that the Trojans especially pray. She is the
patroness of their city, she the regular Achaean City-holder and it is when the Palladion, or image of the protecting Athena,
:
'
'
is
stolen away,
Euripides' Trojan
that Troy eventually can be taken. In Women, one may add, the treachery of
Athena in turning against her notes of the drama.

1 8
own
city
is
one of the main
B 867, A 437. The trinity does not occur outside Homer, and seems possibly to represent some federation of Achaean tribes. Zeus is the most Achaean of
gods ; Apollo has acquired many aboriginal characteristics, but is also (Thracian ? See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, characteristically Northern. p. 463; and for an opposite view, Wilamowitz in Hermes, 1903, p. 575.)
Athena,
of Zeus.
if
The
:
she has pre-Hellenic antecedents, appears as a thorough daughter parallel between Zeus in Greece and Othin in Scandinavia is
very striking
of Othin.
invading gods accepted as supreme by the native populations and imperfectly assimilated to the old system of gods. See Chadwick, Cult
48

One great
city, as
we saw above, did not accept Achaean
In Thebes the Cadmeans, whoever they may have held out to the end. The war of The Seven has a been, different look from the ordinary wars of one Achaean band
rulers.
Orchomenos were destroyed more easily. Thebes seems to have remained like an island in the flood of Achaean invaders. She had them to the north of her in Thessaly and Phthia, to the west in Phocis and
against another.
in
The Minyai
Aetolia, to the east (probably) in Euboea, to the south-west

in Argos. And, if we are to believe tradition, it was from this farthest southern point that they turned, determined
to tolerate no
more the great

if
fortress of the alien race.
But
of
in the main,
we
try to conceive the
Aegean
in, say,
the thirteenth century B.C.,
we must think
of the ancient seats
power as generally standing, but at each palace a northern band of northern followers about him. Their power was based partly on sheer plunder, partly on the taxes yielded by a constantly decreasing trade. It was an unstable condition. Some northern Agamemnon sit at Mycenae, a northern Idomeneus at Cnossos. might They might have imbibed a fair amount of civilization. They were perhaps good rulers. No one could doubt their But too many of their own kinsmen were prowling the valour. adjacent world. It was only by memory that they knew the
chief established as king with a
Riches that Ilion held, the walled and beautiful city, Of old in the passing of peace, ere came the sons of Achaia.
Fewer and fewer caravans
of laden mules plodded up the stone Argive mountains. Fewer and fewer fleets of trading boats came to pay toll in the harbours of Southern
ways
of the
Crete.
In this state of weak equilibrium there came further shocks from the north-west. Other tribes pressed down on the mainland, through Thessaly down to Aetolia, over from Aetolia
to Boeotia, to the north of the Peloponnese, to Elis
by sea came the most dangerous of all enemies, hordes of dispossessed men, who must plunder and slay, or else die. It was possibly
:
ii
'
SACKERS OF CITIES
'
49
with some view of saving his dynasty and consolidating the various bodies of chiefs who would otherwise be troubling
him, that the
of
'
Agamemnon
'
of the time gathered his expedition
all
his
Achaeans against Troy, and won df he did win itmore than Pyrrhic victory. Troy indeed fell, but all
fell
storm, says the tradition, over the face of the deep. scattered the returning kings
it.
Achaean Greece
with
Some came home to die, some were lost, some settled in strange
But for certain their glory was gone, their palaces shaken, and the names of their sons are blotted out from the page of history. Those old northern chiefs had among
lands.
them a
Cities
'.
Sacker of peculiar title of honour, TrroXnropflos, And well did they deserve the name. At first,
or
though they sacked a city, they could in a way rebuild it have it rebuilt. They assimilated enough of Aegean
civilization at least to live in the castles of those
whom
they
But the same thing occurred here as in Rome afterwards. As the ruder hordes and the vaster numbers as the pre-Greek races had sunk in numbers pressed down and in discouragement there came at last tribes who could
conquered.
;
sackers-of-cities destroy but not build nor even keep, who burned and shattered, and then could make no more
of their
'
'
conquest than to live huddled in war-parties among
the ruins.
migration,
One must probably conceive two different processes of by land and by sea respectively. By land, a
whole tribe or nation tended to push on, carrying with it its women, its normal possessions, its flocks and herds. Though
even on land there were
many
varieties in the intensity of
the struggle. In Boeotia, for instance, the conquering race, pushing over from the west, seems to have settled without
much massacre and without any formal enslavement

resident population.
of the
One result of this comparative clemency was a subsequent harshness. The oligarchies in Boeotia continued through several centuries peculiarly severe and The subject race had been admitted to something illiberal. so nearly approaching equality, that it needed in the judge-
50

of
its
n
most
of
ment
-
masters
continual
thrashing.
In
Thessaly, in Argos, Corinth, Sparta, the natives were reduced to
varying degrees of slavery. They became, like the Gibeonites, like the Messenians, 1 hewers of wood and drawers of water as asses walk, weighed down with heavy burdens'. they walked
:
In Attica the invaders seem to have been few and weak.
They merely merged with the

even discern a definite ruling
*"
class.
old population. One cannot It is a fact worth noting
by those who study questions of race, that among both the Greeks and the Hebrews the most prominent and characteristic part of the nation was also the part most largely mixed with the race of the despised aborigines. The tribe As for the of Judah had the largest Canaanite element. 2 claim to be children of the soil, and Athenians, they always Herodotus actually goes so far as to describe them as not
'
Greek but Pelasgian
'.
is
The centre of Greece of the migrations by sea ? not Athens nor Sparta nor any state of the mainland. really The real centre is the Aegean and the migrations by sea are
But what
;
both more characteristic and for after history, I venture to When a tribe moved by land it suggest, more important.
took most of
its belongings with it. When it had to cross the sea a possession must needs be very precious indeed before it could be allowed room in those small boats. Of
course there are cases where a deliberate invasion
is
planned,
the rest
as the Saxons, for instance, planned their invasion of Britain.
The
fighting
men go
first
and secure a foothold
of the
nation can follow
times,
when
things are safe. In historical the Athenians left Attica before the advance of
when
the Persian army, they took their wives and even their herds across the narrow waters to Salamis and Aegina. When the Phocaeans deserted their city and fled to the west, they
seem to have begun by taking

1
their
womankind
at least
Tyrtaeus 6. See e.g. Driver on Gen. xxxviii

in
Cheyne
Bibl.
also
s.
remarks on Edomite and
North Arabian elements
Judah, Enc.
v.
ii
BY LAND AND BY SEA

1
51
where they might hope to find a breathing But these were more organized or at least less helpless place. the movement was well thought out beforehand, peoples and there was friendly land near. In the earlier migrations of the Dark Age a tribe, or mass of people, seldom took to the sea till driven by the fear of death. That was no time
as far as Chios,
;
You might desire greatly or your old wife, for that matter ; young but you would scarcely dare to make such a proposal to the hungry fighters about you. You might wish to take your
to think of taking
women
wife
or herds.
to take your
little
But would the rest of us, think you, choose to be encumbered with another consumer of bread who could
boy.
fight, who might delay us in charging or flying, might cry from the pain of hunger or fatigue and betray us Put some all ? No, leave him on the beach, and come mark on him. Probably some one will make him a slave, and then, with good luck, you may some day knock up
never help in a
against
him and pay
his
ransom.
When we
are off on the sea,
what
is
the prospect before
us ? We have some provisions, though no water. Instead, we take guides who know where there are springs near the sea-shore in divers islands and unfrequented promontories. We can move by night and hide in caves during the day. The guide probably knows places where cattle may, with some
risk,
be raided. Better still, he knows of some villages that have been lately attacked by other pirates, where the men Not all their flocks have are still weak with their wounds.
been
sea,
killed.
We
might well take the

If
rest.
If
we die
of thirst.
we
are seen landing,
we
we stay at are for certain
massacred by any human beings who find us. Piracy on the high seas will not keep us alive. In the good old days, when the Northmen first came, pirates could live like fightingcocks and be buried like princes. But the business has been
spoiled.
There are too many men like ourselves, and too few ships with anything on them to steal. If we go back to
1
Hdt.
i.
165.
Cf.
vi.
the career of Dionysius of Phocaea as a pirate,
vi.
17
of the
Samians,
22
ff.
52
our old home, the invaders have by this time got our women as slaves, and will either kill us or sell us in foreign countries.
anywhere an island to seize ? There are many little desert rocks all studded over the Aegean, where doubtless we have rested often enough when the constrained position of sitting everlastingly at the oars has been too much for
Is there
us
rested
and starved, and some
of us
gone
mad
with thirst
Can some inhabited island ? Alone we are too weak but what if we combined with some other outlaws ? There are some outcast Carians in like plight with ourselves in one In our normal life we would not of the desert caves near. touch a Carian. Their weapons are no gentleman's weapons. But what Their voices make one sick. And their hair And with them are some Leleges, does it matter now ? who worship birds some unknown savages from the eastern
under that hot sun.
waterless rock will be no use.
we
seize
side, dark-bearded hook-nosed creatures answering to babyish and good names like Atta ' and Babba and Duda
'
'
'
'
'
omen some of our that we were always

!
old enemies from near home, the tribe

fighting with
in our cradles.
pleasure to meet
understand their speech. We brothers. We cut one another's arms, pour the blood into a bowl and drink some all round. We swear by our gods
:
and had learned to hate them again One can swear an oath that makes us
!
to
another's gods, things pleasanter, so far as we can make out their outlandish names. And
make
we swear by one
then forth to attack our island.

After due fighting it is ours. The men who held it yesterday are slain. Some few have got away in boats, and may some
but not just yet, not for a day come back to worry us there is bread good long time. There is water to drink and curded milk and onions. There is flesh of sheep or There is wine, or, at the worst, some coarser liquor goats. of honey or grain, which will at least intoxicate. One needs after such a day No more thirst, no more hunger, that, no more of the cramped galley benches, no more terror of the changes of wind and sea. The dead men are lying all
;
:
ii
SEIZING AN ISLAND
us.
53
about
We
will fling
them
into the sea to-morrow.
The
are suitably tied up and guarded. The old one who kept shrieking curses has been spiked with a lance and tossed over the cliff. The wailing and sobbing of the rest will stop
women
if it torments you, you can easily move day or two a few paces away out of the sound. If it still rings in your The ears, drink two more cups and you will not mind it. stars are above us, and the protecting sea round us, we have
in a
got water and food and roofs over our heads. And we wrought it all by our own wisdom and courage and the manifest help
of
Zeus and Apollo.

;
!
What good men we
and pious
and our gods
are, and valiant work they make of what short
other men's gods
There is no trait in the above suggestion that is not drawn from a real case. I have been imagining the case of a quite small island. More often not a whole island was at stake, but only a promontory or a foothold. Nor do we, of course,
ever hear the whole complications of a conquest. always simplified in the tradition.
to
It
is
In Chios, for instance, we hear that there were first Carians, whom a settlement of Abantes from Euboea had joined
themselves.
Then came an invasion
of refugees
from Crete
surely not of pure Cretan blood who gradually grew and * mostly drove out the Carians and Abantes. From Strabo
we
of
hear, significantly enough, of a quite different founder
Chios, a
man
called Egertios,
who brought with him

Tr\rj6o$).
'a
mixed multitude' (vvwtitTov
It
afterwards
counted as one of the chief Ionian
cities.
In Erythrae there
are Cretans, Lycians, and that mixed Graeco-barbaric race called Pamphylians. Later an addition of population from
all
the Ionian cities. It was rather different at Colophon and Ephesus on the mainland. In both cases there was an ancient pre-Hellenic oracle or temple in the neighbourhood. In Colophon there came Greeks from Crete, from
1
xiv. p. 633.
side the epos, are Strabo
The main sources and Pans.
for these colonization traditions, outvii.
54

:
n
believe
Boeotia, from the west of the Peloponnese the epic tradition, there were fragments of
as well.
living
if
we may
many
in
'
other tribes
;
They forced a settlement somehow on the land

as
perhaps,
Wilamowitz
suggests,
Blockhuts
'
on the shore, fighting for a permanent foothold in the barbarian city. In Colophon they are accepted as a ruling In Ephesus caste, and get possession even of the oracle. have a position rather as clients of the are weaker they they great temple, and Diana of the Ephesians remains at heart
;
c
'
she can break out into confessed monstrosity Round another sanctuary, the little in the Roman period.
barbaric
till
rock of Delos, there grows up a peculiar federation of people from divers parts of the Aegean, a league whose business it is to meet at Delos for certain festivals, to pay proper dues to the holy place and to keep it sacred. They were called lawones ', lones, and the name spread gradually to a large 1 part of the Greek people. Nearly everywhere on the mainland and in the isles there are, as we have said, old place-names in a language not Greek, but earlier than Greek. But there are exceptions. In Cos we know of an invasion from Crete. And there all the place'
names are Greek.
What
does that
mean
Is it that in
is,
if the Greek mountain or a river, there was no single native voice not even a woman spared for a concubine to answer them, so that they had to name I see no other plausible explanation. all the places anew ? Different was the end in Lemnos. If tradition is to be believed and, in the one large point where it can be tested, the tradition is confirmed by history there was once done in
this particular island, large
and
fertile as it
invaders wanted to ask the
name
of a
For
all this
paragraph see Wilamowitz's illuminating lecture Die lonische
As to Ephesus, the (Sitzungsber. Berlin. Akad. 1906, iv). ' multimammia ' form of Artemis is of course barbaric, and belongs to the regular Anatolian mother-goddess. It is most remarkable that the recent Wanderung
excavations at Ephesus have unearthed nearly fifty figurines of the goddess, ranging from the eighth to the fourth centuries B.C.,' in none of which " " is there any approximation to the multimammia type rendered familiar
' *
by
statuettes of the
Roman
period
'.
Hogarth, in Times of Nov.
2, 1906.
ii
THE DARK AGE

and
55
Lemnos that
tale
of
act of vengeance for which one's unregenerate

relentless
instinct thirsts in thinking over the bloody
Lemnos were duly The women were duly enslaved as concubines. But slain. either they nursed the memory they were trusted too soon of their wrongs longer than other women, or in some way they had an opportunity denied to others. At any rate the
these conquests.
of
:
The men
native
women
rose
and murdered
their invaders,
and the
island was never completely possessed by the Greeks during It was a hard task for an island all the classical period.
in that position to
keep
itself
un-Hellenized.
But somehow
Pelasgians gathered there.
Later on, when a part of the
population showed some tincture of Greek manners and claimed descent from the Argonauts, it was expelled. When
the children born of some captured Greek women began to show their Greek blood, they were murdered and their mothers with them. The deeds of Lemnos ring with an ominous sound in early Greek proverb, the extreme of horror, no other
'
'
deed
like
them. 1
is the sort of picture that we can recover of the soDark Age. It is a time, as Diodorus says, of constant called 2 a chaos in which war-paths and uprootings of peoples
This
'
an old
civilization is shattered into fragments, its laws set
at naught, and that intricate web of normal expectation which forms the very essence of human society torn so often and so utterly by continued disappointment that at last there
any normal expectation at all. For the fugitive on the shores that were afterwards Ionia, and for parts too of Doris and Aeolis, there were no tribal gods or
ceases to be
settlers
1
it is
Hdt. vi. 138. The Btory fits in with known historical facts ; yet perhaps not safe to trust it. It has too much the look of a myth built upon
; ;
a religious cult of some kind. First the women of Lemnos kill the men then the men kill the women (and children) thirdly, when the Minyans of Lemnos are in prison in Sparta, their wives change clothes with them and save them (Hdt. iv. 146).
8 Ilvicval ffTpariat Kal nfTavaaraads. Cf. of course all through this * discussion the Archaeologia of Thucydides i. Also see Appendix C, on
'
the List of Thalassocrats.
56
There tribal obligations left, because there were no tribes. were no old laws, because there was no one to administer
or even to
remember them
life
strongest power of the
moment
only such compulsions as the chose to enforce. Household
and family
ties
with
it.
A man
had disappeared, and all its innumerable was now not living with a wife of his
but with a dangerous strange woman, of alien and alien gods, a woman whose husband or father language he had perhaps murdered or, at best, whom he had bought The old Aryan husbandman, as a slave from the murderer. as we shall see hereafter, had lived with his herds in a sort of familiar connexion. He slew his brother the ox only under special stress or for definite religious reasons, and he expected his women to weep when the slaying was performed. But now he had left his own herds far away. They had been devoured by enemies. And he lived on the beasts of strangers whom he robbed or held in servitude. He had
race,
'
own
'
left
blood,
the graves of his fathers, the kindly ghosts of his own who took food from his hand and loved him. He was
surrounded by the graves of alien dead, strange ghosts whose names he knew not and who were beyond his power to control,
whom
One only concrete thing
he tried his best to placate with fear and aversion. existed for him to make henceforth
the centre of his allegiance, to supply the place of his old
family hearth, his gods, his tribal customs and sanctities. It was a circuit wall of stones, a Polls the wall which he and
;
tongues and worships united by a tremendous need, had built up to be the one barrier between themselves and a world of enemies. Inside the wall he could
his fellows,
of diverse
men
take breath.
that
He
could become for a time a
man
again,
instead of a terrified beast.

tells us,
The wall was
built, Aristotle
but its inner cause was that was a ship in a great sea, says a character in Sophocles (Ant. 191), whose straight sailing is the first condition of all faith or friendship between man and man. The Polis became a sort of Mother-Goddess, binding together all who lived within its circuit and superseding
live,
men might
men might
live well.
It
ii
THE POLIS
more personal worships.
of historical Greece.
57
all
When
this begins
we have the
germ
This religion of the Polis was, I think, in the later ages and is to us the most helpful, of ancient It has this in common with the others, that it religions.
of Greece, the best,
^j
I
implies in each citizen the willing sacrifice of himself to something greater than himself. It has also to the full their
passionate narrowness. But it differs from all the others It has its roots in knowledge and real in many things.
human need, not in ignorance and terror. Its rules of conduct are based not on obedience to imaginary beings, but on not on observance of taboos, but on serving mankind
;
i
doing good.
of his
'Apera -no\vô\6^ yivti /fyorci'w, says Aristotle in the first line one curious outbreak into poetry, Arete much laboured
'
for
by the race
of man.'
It is
one of the
common burdens
of
early Greek poetry, of Pindar, Hesiod, Phokylides, Simonides, this thirst of men for Arete, the word that we translate
'
Virtue'.
It
is
more, of course, than our Virtue

Virtus.
It
'
more even
goodness which objects can be called good, the quality of a good sword, a good horse, a good servant, or a good ruler. The religion
in
of the Polis did essentially
than the
Roman
'
is
in all the senses
make men
Think
for a
strive to be
more
of
worth, to be
piler of the
good men
'.
moment
of the judge-
ments passed upon
his characters
by the Deuteronomic com;
for
judgement is passed good or evil on almost every king and on what is it based? First, on the question whether the king followed exactly
Book
of Kings.
A sweeping
the precepts and taboos ascribed to the deity worshipped and secondly, whether he duly prevented by the writer
;
even that deity being worshipped anywhere except at the writer's own temple. Great rulers like Jeroboam II or even like Omri, who is treated by the Assyrians as the very
founder of Israel, are passed over with scarcely more than the mere statement that they did evil in the sight of Yahweh '. Now the Jews who wrote under the influence of Deuteronomy
{
represent a religion extraordinarily noble
and enlightened.
58
Compared with the immense majority of ancient religions it Yet contrast with these stands upon a mountain top. distorted judgements of the Deuteronomist those passed by
Athens.
Plato in the Oorgias on the great democratic statesmen of Plato was perhaps the most theologically- minded
of the great
Greek writers
;
great bitterness
prejudiced.
he writes in the Gorgiaa with and I think his judgements extremely

;
Yet from beginning to end he bases his indictments of the various statesmen on one question only, their service to their fellow men. Have they made Athens better and happier ? It looks as if they had but he denies it. have filled the city with docks and arsenals and tributes They and such trash, instead of Sophrosyne and righteousness.' It is the difference between a soul in bondage and a free But to reach that freedom the Greeks had to pass soul. first through fire and then through a great darkness. That
;
*
is
the subject which^we will consider in detail in the next
of these lectures.
Ill
CHAOS AID6S AND NEMESIS

:
WISH
in the present lecture to consider in detail
some
of those sanctions of tribal
custom and
religion
which were
exposed to change or destruction in the anarchy of the great and then, in the apparent wreck of all, to study Migrations
:
the seed of regeneration which seems to have been left. I do not know that we can begin better than by following
a curious by-path of the decline of tribal religion, the history of our brother, the ox '. Not that it is specially characteristic
'
lof Greece.
it is
It occurred over
most
of
Europe and Asia.
But
one of a multitude of changes that must have befallen

of Greece.
with some intensity and sharpness of outline in the Dark
Age
Professor Robertson Smith has
shown with great
skill
the
position of the domestic animals in the early agricultural

tribes,
both Aryan and Semitic. The tribe or kindred was the whole moral world to its members. Things outside the tribe were things with which no reasonable man concerned
himself.
So far as they forced themselves on the tribesmen's
attention, they were bad, unclean, hostile.
And
the tribe
what ? Of certain human beings, certain gods one or more and certain flocks of animals. The thing that made them one was, according to Dr. Robertson Smith's most suggestive explanation, that sacred thing in which Life
consisted of
itself is,
the
was
in the flocks as
common blood running in the veins of all. It much as in the men. Nay, sometimes
since the
rather
more
ox, a sheep, or
god himself was often in some sense an a camel. If we are, say, the Sons of Moab,
is
then our
God Chemosh
Moab.
are the flocks of
the god of Moab and our cattle They have shared our food and we
have drunk of their milk. The common blood runs in us all. It would actually seem, from the evidence, that certain
early agricultural folk never used their domestic animals for
60
in
ordinary food. They would not so shed the tribal blood. They killed wild animals, or, if chance offered, the cattle of
strangers.
Their
own animals were not
killed except for
the definite purpose of sacrifice.
Now, if anything went wrong with the tribe for any unknown cause, if the harvest was bad, the cattle sick, the
water scarce, the neighbouring tribes overbearing, the cause
mind of the god. had forgotten them. It must His feeling for his kindred was becoming faint. be renewed. And the regular and almost universal method of renewing it was to take some of the living blood of the tribe, take it especially while warm and living and full of its miraculous force, and share it between the god and the people. You went where the god lived, or you called him to come to a particular pit or stone or heap of stones an altar and there, after due solemnities, you shed the sacred blood for him to drink. Feeding the god caused no great difficulty. It was easy to pour the blood into the pit or upon the altar and that rite always remained. There was more awkwardness, and consequently more variety of usage, about providing for the tribesmen themselves. For men began early to shrink from consuming raw flesh and blood, and devised
was usually sought
in the attitude
of
Chemosh was angry with
his people, or
other ways of appropriating the virtues of the miraculous

liquid.
Of course we must not suppose that this was the only origin
The mere calling of the god to share your feast was another and a simpler one. But it is enough for our present purpose that this form of rite existed. As you spared the ox in ordinary life because he was your brother and fellow labourer, so you slaughtered him on a great occasion for the same reason. Had he not been your brother, the If we consult sacrifice would have lacked half its power.
of sacrifice.
the collections of anthropologists,
we
shall find
many
various
ways
in
which
this feeling of
animal
expressed. that tribe to whom anthropologists
is
brotherhood with the domestic^ The Todas of South India, for instance
owe
so
much
sacrifice
in
OUR BROTHER THE OX>

When
the victim
falls,
61
a buffalo once a year only.
men,
women, and children group themselves round its head, and fondle, caress, and kiss its face, and then give way to wailing In other cases you beg the animal's and lamentation. before slaying it, and explain to it the dire necesforgiveness
sity of the case, or the high
honour you are really conferring that it shall seem to desire to die. upon it. Or you arrange You make an elaborate apparatus for self-deception, so that
the beast
may seem
to ask
you to
let it die for
the tribe. 1
I do not think it shall kill itself. can be drawn here between the practices any The early Aryan peoples seem to have had of different races. this conception, and therefore probably the Achaeans had it.
You even
arrange that
clear distinction
Whereas, on the other hand, the clearest instances surviving in Greece in historical times evidently belong to the strata
of
more primitive peoples.

*
of the domestic, the familiar

<f>6vos,
The word applied to this slaughter and friendly, animal, is regularly

5
the legal word for murder '. And the locus classicus on the subject is of course Theophrastus 2 description of the
Athenian festival called Bouphonia, or Ox-murder, which

consisted chiefly in an elaborate ritual for ridding the various actors in the ceremony from the guilt of the murder of their
friend.
in the
slayer flies for his life. ceremony is tried for murder.
The
Every one concerned Those who drew water

tried first
:
for the sharpening of the
weapons are
but they
only drew the water, they did not sharpen the axe and knife. The sharpeners are next accused, and produce the men to
whom
they gave the weapons after they were sharpened. These produce another man, who struck the victim down with the axe he another, who cut its throat. This last man
:
accuses the knife, which
is
thrown into the sea.
And besides all this,
solemnly pronounced guilty and it has been arranged
that the ox shall have gone up to the altar of his own free will and eaten of the sacrificial grains, thereby showing that he
R. Smith, Rdigion of the Semites, p. 309. Cf J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. Ill, note 1, and authorities there cited. There is a similar $ovos of a bear practised to-day in Saghalien.
8
.
62

slain.
in
wished to be
stuffed, set
Further
on
his feet,
all
;
never been killed at
still, the dead ox is quickly and yoked to a plough as if he had it had all been a bad dream.
Now
what, in its ultimate element of

?
human
off
feeling,
does
When the hocus-pocus, this mean the theological make-believe of getting rid of pollution by a number of dodges which can deceive no one, there remains at
you have stripped
the back a seed of simple
human feeling that the act
of slaying:
the your old kinsman and fellow worker is rather horrible that any honest man has about the killing of a pet feeling lamb for food. It was a thing, so Greek tradition tells us,
that
man
where there was, no violent migration, and where a large practically speaking, element of the old population mingled gradually and peacefully
The
in the golden age did not do. 1 Bouphonia took place in Attica,
with a small element of the new.
One
finds traces of
the same spirit in the epics of the mainland. Hesiod, in this respect representing a stationary society which had either
recovered from the violence of the Migrations or had preserved throughout them much of the peaceful agricultural tradition,
always speaks of the ox as a sort of kinsman and partner. A house, an ox, and a woman (Erga, 405) are what man needs
*
'
for the facing of the world.
ox to be nine years old stinted of his due dinner

:
his
ploughman
Hesiod (Erga, 436 ff.) likes his to be forty, and not
of bread.
You know one
another's
ways by that time, and feel comfortable together. Clearly a Notice again how nine-year-old ox is not kept for eating. Hesiod speaks (Erga, 452) of keeping the oxen indoors and
well fed in the cold weather
in the
of
'
;
of the east
winds (Erga, 504)
month of Lenaion, evil days, they just skin the ox, all them of the cold dawn, how it puts yokes on many
'
'
oxen
your
'
(Erga, 580).
little girls
During the winter storms, too, you and can sit inside by the fire and keep warm, but
1 R. Smith, Religion of Semites, p. 304, and Plat. Laws, 782 C 'Op<piicoi nvts @iot. Plutarch in his brilliant essays ncpl âpKotyayias takes just the opposite view the savage can be excused for flesh-eating, the civilized man
:
not.
I suspect that his source
was Dicaearchus's great book
&ios 'EAA<5os.
in
HESIOD'S
OX
63
the wind blows through the ox's hide, it cannot be kept out, and through the fell of the shaggiest goat. But not the sheep. Their wool is too thick, and they do not mind. Do you observe How the ox is a friend, a member of/the sentiment of it all ?
|
the family.
will
You The name they kept for him tells the same story. remember the regular phrase in the older poetry tl\iiroba$ faunas fiovs, the two epithets of rather dim and unrealized
*
meaning that are habitually applied to cattle. E&feo&csi rolling the feet,' is an antithesis to the word applied to
'
horses,
fapcri-nobes,
lifting
the feet.
horse steps high,
a cow's foot makes a more horizontal curve.

the other word
e'At/ces ?
And what
it
of
The Greeks understood
as
'
curly-
horned', the opposite of PO&V 6p0oKpaipda>v 9 'straight-horned cattle.' There were the two breeds in early Greece. But do you
two adjectives (that they both belong names or nicknames applied to wellknown animals names like puss and bunny ? ) Hesiod, he has our earliest farm-yard poet, is full of such names a nickname even for the ant and the snail and the octopus, and no-bones rewise-wit housecarrier (778) and The hare is flr(o, trembler,' and the goat /XTJKCI?, spectively.
notice this about the
:
to the class of familiar
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
bleater,' the hog, rather less politely, is o-taXoy,
'
grease.'
'
And
or
'
this explains a little difficulty.

'
"EXtKes
means
curly
',
crumpled
6
and Dr. Leaf,

it is
'
in his invaluable
commentary
to -the Iliad, objects that
scarcely possible language to
speak of a
jective with
crumpled cow
when you mean a cow with

:
crumpled horns. True, if the word were still a simple adit is no special connotations. But it is not a name, almost a pet-name. When Hesiod's forty-year-old
ploughman came down

1
as usual rather before
dawn and
seem
ataA.cs merely meant ( 1 hog, (2) hog's grease. Sheep have no nickname. In general cf. 630 ff., where 'the horned and hornless wood-sleepers in a snowstorm go with their tails between their It is the same spirit. There is legs, like a lame man bent over his stick. intimacy with animals in general, even the snake in the new fragments is but with the ox there 'No-hair,' arpiôs. (Berl. Klassikertexte, V. 1, p. 36) is much more. v. 559 f. I do not understand.
Unless indeed
to
64

his nine-year-old cow, I
;
met
suppose he addressed her as
Helix
he said, in
'
fact,
Good morning, Crumple.'

'
And when for some grave occasion this ox had to be what shall we say ? murdered is the old Greek word was a solemn occasion. Take a case where the feeling
'
it
is
keen, the sacrifice at Nestor's house at Pylos in already the third book of the Odyssey (415-50). Nestor is, of course,
less
a Homeric hero, but he normal influences of home
is
now back
at home, under the

is
life.
The occasion
a special one.
There has been a visible appearance of Pallas Athena, and it is necessary to honour her, or renew the tribal bond with
an extraordinary way. Let some one go to the field,' for an ox and the ox-herd is to come with him. says Nestor, And bring also the goldsmith Laerkes, to put gold on the horns
her, in
' ;
'
Then follows a solemn description of all the apparatus and the details the goldsmith's tools and work the purification of every person present to receive what may be called the sacrament
of
the ox.
And everybody
wait here.'
of the
kindred blood
it
so that
may
not be
the suitable sacrificial vessels placed where it might spilt upon the ground
:
the man appollute the earth or even cry for vengeance to strike, and the man appointed to cut the throat. pointed
Then, as the bull is struck, the daughters and the daughtersin-law and the august wife of Nestor all wailed aloud.' Exactly, you see, as the Todas wail.
of the ox, the habitual sacrifices of the Iliad
'
Contrast with this timid, religious, almost tender slaying and of those
parts of the Odyssey where the sacrificer is not in his own land. Compared with Nestor's sacrifice, they seem like the massacres
of a slaughter-house, followed by the gorging of pirates. The heroes make merry, Slaughtering sheep beyond number and crook-horned swing-footed oxen.' They sit all day
' '
and sweet strong wine
long even to the setting sun feasting on measureless ox-flesh '. The sacrificial terms are there,
but are somehow shortened and made brutal. The only people in the Odyssey who behave like that are, first, the wicked
suitors,
who devour Odysseus'
flocks
and secondly,
in
Odysseus'
HOMER'S OXEN
own men when they
65
slaughtering the herds The heroes of the Iliad have crossed the give us the clue.
sea,
are acting as pirates, and of the Cicones. These exceptions
and are no longer dealing with their own kindred. The oxen they slaughter in droves are only strangers' oxen, not
their
own
familiar herds.
They
kill
them
as light-heartedly
would kill the strangers themselves. They think no more of the ox as an individual. The distinction of their hecatombs lies only in the general largeness and expensiveness of the whole proceeding. It may be objected to my method here, that the difference in question is merely that between peace and war, and is not My whole answer specially connected with the Migrations. But it is at least the difference to that will come gradually. between peace and a prolonged and disorganized state of war in which ordinary wont and use has been forgotten. And that was just the state produced by the Migrations. Of course Homer's picture is in a dozen ways idealized and removed Yet in the main, the chiefs of the Iliad, from history. adventurers who have forced a landing on a foreign shore and live in huts on the beach, year out, year in, supporting themselves by plunder and decimated by pestilences, never
as they
quite strong enough to capture the native city, nor weak enough to be finally driven into the sea, are exactly in the
normal position
of these outcasts of the Migrations.

it,
In their
minds, as Achilles expresses 1 cattle can be got in raids '.

;
Arjioreu
let
fzei>
ydp re fioes
But
us consider the other

j
influences that held these

\
men
before the Migrations, and see
what became
of
them afterwards.
The Achaeans, at least* must have been organized in tribes, or federations of tribes, and a tribe must naturally have a tribal god. The two clearest gods of the Northerners are Zeus and Apollo next
;
1 First, then, their definite gods.
Some types of pastoral and agricultural gods and divine kings might be treated here, but the same argument can easily be applied to them. See pp. 126 and 181 ff. below, Lectures V and VIII.
1
MURRAY
66
to

them Athena.
in
their characters greatly in different places
Athena and Apollo, however, have changed by taking on the
cult or the personality of divers local objects of worship. And even Zeus suffered some modification when, for purposes
harmony, he was transformed into the unrecognized and long-lost son of his conquered enemy, Pelasgian Cronos. Let us leave all these details aside for the present and consider what would happen to a migrant Achaean with regard to his tribal god. The business of that god was, of course, to fight for and protect his tribe. His character, and his attributes, so far as he had any, were, for the most part, simply the character and attributes of the tribe. That is, to the tribe themselves he had no noticeable character he was just what a reasonable god naturally would be. If they used bows, so presumably did he but they did not think the matter worth mentioning. If they were characteristically bards, smiths, seafarers, spearmen,
of theological
'
*
: :
mine-workers, naturally their god presided over all they did. Thus to a stranger coming across the tribe the god would
he would be a smith, a ruler a spearman, a god of mines, a singer. That is perhaps how, when a federation of tribes was made, there arose departmental gods, with special attributes and almost
produce a definite impression

of the sea,
a Lemnian Hephaistos, always special geographical homes an Athenian Pallas, an Argive Hera, a Cyprian or Cytherean
:
Aphrodite.
Now
Pytho
as long as the tribe
remained whole, the god
of course
:
was with them.
He had
his definite dwelling-places
the
or Patara, the Bethel or
Mamre, where he could be
counted upon to appear. Even when the tribe moved, he, in a slow and reluctant way, moved with them. He was present wherever the tribe was, though on great occasions
it
to him, to
might be safer that the chiefs should send embassies back make sacrifice at some Dodona, some Sinai, some Carmel, where he had for certain been present to their fathers.
But in these sea- migrations the tribe was never whole. The chieftains can still call on their Achaean Zeus, and he
in
TRIBAL GODS
:
67
but there is a feeling that he is hears or rejects their call not present as he once was. He has to be called by his old
names, with a feeling of the distance that lies between 1 Lord, thou of Dodona, Zeus,' prays Achilles at Troy, thou Pelasgian, dwelling far away.' The titles whatever
:
'
'
Pelasgian
you really Achaean Zeus seated on
may mean serve the purpose of showing that know who he is and belong to him. Our old
his
listen to the crying of strange
throne at Dodona, why should he men in Asia ? There be very

'
things between, shadows of mountains and noises of But each of these words will attract his attention. the sea.'
many
is
It
as
if
Achilles said,
'
Zeus, thou
who
art
my own
lord,
hast spoken to my fathers at Dodona.' Zeus did, in a way, move from mountain to mountain, just The Muses were first at home in Pieria as the Muses did.
who
and Olympus, and then moved south to Helicon and ParZeus nassus, doubtless accompanying their worshippers. established on Mount Ida in front of Troy when was actually He had come there Achilles prayed to him as Dodonaean. with his Phrygians long since. But the Zeus of Mount Ida was the god of Troy, and surely could not accept the prayer
of Troy's enemies.
\of
Dodona
Even
is
2
is a painful embarrassment. Zeus to Zeus of Ida. The tribe is divided opposed
There
against
itself.
life,
in the Iliad, amid all its poetical refurbishment of there remain these unconscious marks of the breaking
up
of the
Achaeans.
But
it is
clear
from those cases which
we considered
miscellaneous
Ionian colonies, that the real Greek settlements of the migration consisted of the most
of the various
gatherings from various tribes, together, I should imagine, with a leaven of broken men, whose tribal belongings were forgotten. Now among such a O-V^^LKTOV
as Strabo phrases it the influence of the definite tribal gods would be reduced
TrXijOos
such a
'
mixed multitude
'
Ztv ava, AcuSarrafc, Tl\a.ffyiK, 13 233. Zenodotus, $rjycvai* a good and ancient variant thou of the Oak Tree.' 3 Of. above, Lecture II, p. 47, about Athena and Apollo.
*
:
evidently
F 2
68

e '
ra
almost to nothing. The common Wall has to supersede them. Partly perhaps from some innate tendency of the mind, but largely also from the force of circumstances, there
is
a diametric opposition in this matter between Greeks and
Jews.
The Jews seem
to have found their
kinsmen
in
Moab
worshipping a tribal god, Chemosh, according to rites pracThey, or at least the sacertically identical with their own.
dotal party which prevailed among them, immediately regarded Chemosh as an enemy and a devil, and where they observed
difference in the ritual, they magnified it and with loathing. The ordinary Greeks would have regarded said The Moabites call Zeus Chemosh, though some say
some small
it
*
he
is
Heracles rather than Zeus.'
Now when
gods are fused or renamed like

less living
this,
they must
needs become
and
definite.
For one thing, the
taboos or sacred practices change. In Greece itself some people who would have died rather than eat a mouse seem to
have mingled with others who felt the same about lizards. Their gods were both identified with Apollo. 1 When an
avoider of mice found his friend eating mice freely near
Apollo's temple and meeting with no condign punishment, he must naturally have been filled with religious anger. For a generation or so the anger may have remained, latent
or visible.
when both
But eventually, it would seem, a time came parties ate what they liked, and both, on the other hand, paid an easy toll to their gods by joining in solemn
taboo animals on suitable days. The religion had come into conflict with the common conveniences of life, and been beaten.
sacrifices of the
A
any
tribal god, as
fair
we have
seen, could
present
number of among them.
his tribe
As long as could keep together, he was

move.
objects of worship were not
But other
the pre-Greek populations the most preAll vailing and important worship was that of the dead.
movable.
Among
Apollo Smintheus (A 39) Sauroctonos.
cf.
Isaiah Ixvi. 17, and the original form of
in
Asia Minor
worthies,
'
THE DEAD
is
HEROES
69
still
whom
the
strewn with the graves of innumerable course of history has turned into
Mahometan Walis or Christian Saints. The old races called them Heroes '. They were much the same as the Roman
Lares, ghosts of dead friends and ancestors, duly laid in the earth and worshipped with a few simple ceremonies and
small regular offerings of food and drink. 1 Good scholars have written of this worship as if it consisted entirely in the
fear
and placation
originally
of
of
like Plutarch, there is
In later writers, dangerous ghosts. evidence that points in this direction.

clear that this was not the The ghost of the friend who unless you in some way starve or
it is
But
and normally
spirit
ancestor- worship.
loved you, loves you still, The dangerous ghost is the ghost of a strange injure him. kin. This conception certainly affected the whole of Greece, and was perhaps the strongest religious bond regulating
Both Aegean and Northerner were bound to life. tombs by a thousand delicate and powerful ties. But the men of the Migrations had left their fathers' graves behind them. The ghosts whom they ought to have fed and cared for were waiting in the old lands helpless, with parched lips, staring through the dark earth that lay above them. 2 And in the new lands where now they trod, they were surrounded by strange graves where lay not their own fathers, but the fathers of the men they had wronged and All later Greece was full of slain, ghosts who hated them.
private
their
these
unknown
the
graves.
They devised many ceremonies to

For one thing they were honestly
appease
1
ghosts.
Babrius (second century A.D.?) says definitely (fab. 63) that the gods are the cause of good, the heroes of evil. Similarly, the still later Salustius
says that god causes good, and the daemon evil. This becomes the normal sense of daifiouv in post-Christian writing. But contrast Hesiod, Erga, 123 ff., where the Heroes are blessed guardian angels, datôvts aO\oi.
The account
in Paus. vi. 9. 8 of the
mad Cleomedes
:
of
Astypalaea
illus-
trates the sinister kind of hero.
But perhaps the best commentary on the
whole conception is the Oedipus Coloneus Oedipus lies in the grave Cf. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 9, charged full of curses and blessings. pp. 326 ff.
8
Cf. for instance,
Eur. Tro. 1283.
70
frightened.
in
For another they knew that their own dead were lying in the same condition, and they vaguely trusted that perhaps at home also the strangers were doing well by
them.
But
They may
a timid uncertain honour that they give. at any time be bearing some particular pollution
it
is
which specially kindles the dead man's rage.
They know
not his name, and cannot call him. He is only the Hero, one of the sainted dead, the tvtypovts, the \pj]^roi^ One thing indeed they could contrive, in rare cases, by the
charms.
help of their best areteres, the medicine- men and makers of They could call the soul of their own dead hero
his
from
following their ships to the new settlement, there to enter into an empty tomb which they
grave and keep

for
it.
it
had made
Colchis at the farther end of the Black Sea,

to Thessaly.
In this way Phrixus, who had died in was brought back

his
In this way Melanippus was brought from
ancient grave in Thebes to Sikyon, in the hope that his presence would cause his old enemy Adrastus to move to a
new grave
his
further away.
Achilles seems to
have changed
grave several times, from Phthia to Skyros, from Skyros to Troy, from Troy to the happy island of Leuce. But there
were difficulties in this process. A people flying from a conquering foe could never carry it out. And perhaps the It seems to have needed practice itself was not very old.
the help of a doctrine about the soul rather less concrete and material than that of the old Aegean races, a doctrine that
was wafted to them by contact with the Northerners. And one doubts whether, when all was done, the ritual always
carried conviction.
Very often the tomb

1
of the
dead hero had oracular powers.

'
As
to these nameless or
i.
Diog. Laert.
avuvvnovs.'
ijpQji
10. 3,
unknown heroes 'one finds even now Kara rovs
'
the clearest evidence
is
Sv/ôvs ran/ 'AOrjvaiwv
(3ojfjioi>$
uv$rjK
rts),
Perhaps also the frequent anonymous inscriptions 'lictaios For particular cases cf. Paus. iii. 13. 7 ripui o o/>oy, &c.
33.
(^/>cus
x.
'
6 (Swear's
'
avrjp)
in x.
'.
4.
10
i.
the
35. 7,
unknown person
*
he is not really vi. 6. 7 IT. he is evil, hostile, and nameless, and Geryon, but only Hyllus is at last driven out. Cf. also i. 43. 3 (Aisymnion at Megara), i. 34. 3, v. 15. 12
either
!
has become
Xanthippus or Phocus
So
(generalizing the dead).
in
THE DEAD
ORACLES
71
His children in their perplexities could draw upon the wisdom

of their great ancestor, as the Persians in Aeschylus'
tragedy
seek counsel from their dead Darius.
formed the greatest engine of the pre-Hellenic tribes. And, as far as one can make out, an oracle never moved* When a change of population took place, either it was forgotten, as happened often and often
;
Probably these oracles divine authority in most of
or else
it
was
for
some reason spared
new possessors of the land. often left in charge, and the old worshippers, when a time of safety came, could make pilgrimages back to it. Nearly all
the
or partly annexed by Priests of the old race were
Greece were taken over on terms by the Northmen. The holy place tv AcAc/xus, among the incoming Delphians, which had once belonged in joint ownership to an Earth-Mother and an underworld serpent, typical of some
the oracles of
departed hero, passed over, with or without battle, to the Northern prophet, Apollo. Apollo took the oracle of the Abantes at Abae that of the Carian clan of the Branchidae
:
among the barbarians in the neighbourhood of Miletus. On the other hand, for some reason or other he left the Lebadean
hero, Trophonios, in peace, and the dead man continued to give oracular dreams in the old cave according to the old
rites.
tions.
But our present concern is with the men of the MigraWhatever happened, they were cut off from their dead.
To
Chios,
still
those fugitive Abantes, for instance, who helped to settle it mattered little whether their deserted oracle at Abae
spoke or was
it,
silent for ever.
They
at
any rate had no
guidance from
Nay
/
]
of the Migrations it
there was something worse. At times like these was best not to bury your dead, unless
indeed you could be sure of defending their graves.
For you which must have all of you now done, and are doing, things make men hate you as your fathers and grandfathers were
never hated in their ordinary intertribal wars. You are taking from men everything that they live by, their land,
homes, wives,
cattle, gods,
and the graves
of their fathers.
72
ra
And
to requite in
the beaten remnant of those you have wronged, unable due kind your many murders, are skulking
round by night, as you well know, homeless and They rage, to do you any chance harm they can.
some wounded men, some women, or children. sometimes carry off some dead from the field of battle. At the worst they can dig up some of your fallen comrades from
their graves.
mad with may catch They may
be repeated the well-known orgy of helpless pitiful revenge, the lust of unhappy hate trying
will
And then
in a
hundred ways to find its peace.

be,
you may
you conquering
races,
For however magnificent you cannot make men
broken-hearted with entire impunity.
There is hardly anything in Greek antiquity which is so surrounded with intense feeling as this matter of the mutilation or dishonouring of the dead.
Throughout
all
it
poetry,
rings,
through the Epos, tragedy, and the historians,
hushed and vibrating note, spoken, a thing which to
telling of
something scarce to be see makes men mad. Scholars
are apt to apologize for this earnestness as a peculiarity of ancient feeling which we have a difficulty in understanding. But I fancy that every one who has come across the reality
feels
find their
the same as a Greek did English soldiers who dead comrades mutilated in wars with savages, or the combatants on both sides in the sempiternal strife in the south-east of Europe, where Christian and Moslem still are
;
much
apt to dishonour infidel corpses. There was one perfect way of saving your dead from all You could burn them into their ultimate dust. 1 outrage.
The
practice
was the
less painful to
the feelings of the sur-
1 Cf. 1 Sam. xxxi. 12, where the men of Jabesh-gilead burn the bodies of Saul and his son, to save them from further outrage by the Philistines. (Burning seems to have been strongly against Israelite feeling; many commentators emend the text.) In Scandinavia there is some evidence to show that cremation came in with the cult of Othin. Othin's dead were burned and their souls went off to Valhall. In the older belief they were buried or howe-laid ', and stayed, souls and all, in the howe, and exercised a beneficent influence on the fortunes of the family ', or defended the grave when it was broken into. This is curiously similar to the condition in Greece.
* *
See Chadwick, Cult of Othin,
p. 58.
in
vivors,
THE GRAVE NOT SAFE
73
inasmuch as the Northerners, who were now influential among them, had used it in their old homes, in the forest country from which they came. For cremation, like the other Homeric custom of roasting meat, is a practice which demands abundance of wood. But in Greece the other system seems Even at Mycenae, where generally to have held its own. there were Northerners in possession, the dead are buried, And Greek language about the other life is on not burned. the whole far more affected by the conceptions dependent on burial. The dead are always \Q6vioi, people of the earth
'
* ;
their
realm
Kvio-r],
is
below.
The ghosts are not thought
of as so
much
of
or vapour of burnt flesh.
And
the practice
cremation might well have been forgotten entirely had not this special time of unrest revived it. The grave was no
longer safe.
And men burned

birds,
their
from dogs,
and enemies.
comrades to save them Sometimes we find that
instead of burning, they buried them in peculiarly sacred places, or in unknown and secret graves, for the same reason
:
Lest angry
men
Should find their bones and cast them out again
To
evil. 1
There was another form

been expected to
of
worship which might have

itself.
Throughout Western Greece to the heart

little
persist, or at least quickly to recover the region that we are concerned with,
from
if
of Asia Minor, it
seems as
every community in pre- Hellenic times a certain almost uniform type of goddess. 2
had worshipped A Kore or Maiden we generally name her, taking the Greek word, but the Kore passes through the stages of Mother and sometimes of Bride as well the mother earth, the virgin corn, the tribe's own land wedded and made fruitful. As we meet the fullflown deities of classical Greece, the Athenaia Kore has
:
'
'
Eur. Med. 1380. See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 257-322,

*
:
The making
i.
of a
ff.
:
Goddess
W. M. Ramsay,
Cities
and Bishoprics
of Phrygia,
:
87
Frazer Attis, <&c., Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, extra vol., p. 135 f. chap, iii, and Golden Bough: and A. Evans in J. H. S. xxi. pp. 170-80, and B. S. A. ix. p. 85 f.
74

;
in
become the
the wife of Zeus
the Argive Kore is Hera, virgin Pallas Athena others are merged in Artemis or Aphrodite. ;
Others, especially all over Asia Minor, remain throughout the centuries nameless and uncharactered, mere forms of the
Earth-Mother, mothers of fruit or mothers of wild beasts, worshipped with ecstasy in seasons of death and new birth,
or of
bereavement and reunion. 1
Now, one
set of agricultural
people driven over seas and taking refuge in the land of another, would, as far as one can guess, generally find themselves in
the midst of the worship of another Kore so close to their own that they could at once accept her. Yet one must
remember, first, that the fugitives were as a rule cut off for some time from agriculture and secondly, that every Kore was apt to have certain secret rites and perhaps a secret name to which the strangers would not be admitted. As a matter of
:
fact, there is
something to be deduced from the geographical

in
names which remained

take one instance.
If
vogue for the various Korai.

like
To
names
Paphia, Cypris, Cytherea,
Erycina, &c. persist throughout antiquity, it clearly means that even when a certain set of Korai were definitely merged
felt to
under the name of Aphrodite, still Our Lady of Paphos was be different from Our Lady of Cythera or of Eryx. It is worth while remembering that even at the present day
Spain the people of two neighbouring villages will insult and throw stones at one another's Madonna. There was perhaps not much moral guidance to be had from the Corn but such as there was must have Maiden or her mother been rudely broken and destroyed for the generations of the
in
:
flight
by
sea.
In one respect this antique worship of the Kore was bound

up,
if
we may
believe
some
of the ablest of
modern
investi-
distinguish
gators, with the influences of daily domestic life. two forms of the family in early Greece,
We
must which
corresponded roughly, though not exactly, with a division of races. 2 The Achaeans had, as is abundantly proved, the
1
The Homeric
Cf the
.
Mother of Gods is fairly typical. Auge (Heracles) and Aithra (Theseus) stories, and above, p.
Hymn
to the
'
45, note.
in
regular
EARTH MAIDENS
:
THE TWO FAMILIES
75
Aryan institution of marriage and patriarchal rule. Monogamy was fixed the woman was, within limits, the property of her husband. Relationship was counted through the male side, and the son succeeded to his father's estate.
If
woman attempted
to bear a child to
any man but her
special master, she was apt to be burned alive, or torn asunder by horses. Monogamy was the rule, enforced on the woman
and admired in the man. But among the pre-Hellenic races it was different. House property belonged to the woman and descended from mother to daughter. The father did not count at least not primarily
in the reckoning of relationship.
He
did count for some-
thing, since
sons went off

/in
I
exogamy, not endogamy, was the rule. The to foreign villages to serve and marry the women
Their sisters, we have reason them with dowries. the two systems may have the more,/ probable that both of them led to a
;
possession of the land there.
to believe, generally provided
Now, whichever
glaring defects,
sort of ordered
it
of
is
life
and regular life, which one may call domestic regulated by bonds of daily duties and affections. In
the case of patriarchal marriage the case is clear. No one will dispute its powerful effect in the ordering of conduct.
Some people may doubt

the
'
matriarchal
'
or
'
the presence of any similar power in matrilinear system. But I think

'
that they will be wrong. Certainly the matriarchal tribes of the present day seem to possess a highly ordered
affectionate
home
life.
Of course, at the time we are considering, both these^ systems were parts of a rough state of society, in which the weaker part of the human race is not likely to have had a very
satisfactory
life
of
it.
But
it
is
important to remember,
glibly speak of the higher conception of morals and the purer family life of the patriarchal Aryans, that after all
See especially Tylor in Classical Review, xx. 7 ('
fur Religionsivissenschaft,
1
when we
Who
The Nineteenth Century, July, 1896 A. B. Cook, was the wife of Zeus ? ') Farnell, in Archiv
:
1904, vii (severely critical)
Frazer,
Kingship,
Lecture VIII.
76
the relation of mother to child is probably, even to our ideas, the deepest, most influential, and, if I may use such a word, the most holy of human relationships. And this relation
was not only preserved by the older system, but was preserved in a clearer and more authoritative form. The influence of the patriarchate on religion is, of course, overpoweringly great. Protestant and Mahometan countries are entirely dominated by it. Yet if one tries to think for a moment of the vast volume of prayer that is steaming to heaven at any one hour from all the corners of the world, or, shall we say, of Christendom, I wonder if he will find any more intense, more human, more likely to achieve its end, than the supplication which rises from all parts of Southern and Eastern Europe, to that most ancient and many-named Madonna, who has sat throned upon her rocks and been a mother of many erring children from thousands of years before the coming of Christianity.
And further, if a man, who believes somehow in the reality and ultimate worth of some religion of gentleness or unselfishness, looks
his faith, it
through the waste of nature to find support for is probably in the phenomena of motherhood
it first
that he will find
and most
:
strikingly.
:
Every
living
animal preys upon every other true yet a mother partridge will fight a dog to save her chickens, and a tigress die in defence of her cubs. The religious system connected with the
matriarchal household, based on the relation of mother to child
must be counted, I think, among the great and elevating influences of mankind. civilizing And, though this point is perhaps taking us too long, I would ask you also to consider the extreme beauty of those fragments or elements of the Greek saga in which the young hero is befriended and counselled by a mother or a guardian goddess. Think of Heracles and Athena, Odysseus and Athena, Perseus and Athena, Jason and Hera, Achilles and Thetis. Achilles, we are duly informed, was the son of Peleus. Peleus in himself is a great saga- figure and it is a fine story how he caught and won his sea-goddess, how she bore his son, and how, being divine, in the end she could
other,
;
and no
in
WOMEN AND OLD MEN
77
not dwell with him, but went back to her blue caverns under the sea. Yet how little, as a rule, Peleus matters to his son
!
mother Thetis that he prays, his mother Thetis that helps him. And few beings even in the Iliad have the magic of that sea-spirit, so unearthly and yet so tender. 1 No. Do not let us condemn too carelessly the home of the pre-Hellenic peoples which knew of mothers and children, but not much of husbands. Both forms of home must have acted as powerful moral influences in man's life before the time of the migrations by sea, and both equally were destroyed at that time, and their divers ties and tendernesses battered As for this trouble about Briseis,' says out of existence.
Achilles
is
When
in grief
it is
to his
Agamemnon
to the envoys,
'
tell
Achilles that I will give
him seven Lesbian women down, and I promise him that, when we take Troy, he can pick out twenty Trojan women any twenty excluding Helen.' And Briseis herself has not a proper name. The word Briseis is only an adjective derived from the town of Brisa or Bresa in Lesbos. She is the girl
'
from Bresa'. So much for the respect of woman which forms a part of the tradition of both forms of home. And what of the father ?
It is interesting,
of the
treatment of fathers
though not strange, how keenly this question is felt. It was the same in the
early
is
Aryan household, and throughout historical Greece. It the same, I should imagine, in all societies except those
in
which people, like the rich at the present day, live on incomes derived from accumulated stores of wealth and are
consequently far removed from the groundwork of human needs. In all poor or precarious societies there is an assumption that the children owe the parents a definite debt for their food and rearing. The parents fed and protected the child when he was helpless. Now that the old man cannot fight,
the son must fight for him when he cannot work, the son must support him. Yet when men are flying or fighting
:
for their lives,

1
when every weak hand
or slow foot brings
There
is
the same beauty in the Thetis of Euripides' Andromache.
78
danger to the whole party, there must have been many old men left by their sons to save themselves as best they might. The conscience of the Greek Saga was stirred on the point.
Not without purpose does it tell us how Aeneas in the very flames of Troy, when every delay might mean death, would not move without 'father Anchises ', and, when Anchises' strength failed, faced all the dangers of flight amid armed enemies with the old man upon his back. That is what the
It is the other side of Hesiod's complaint, saga calls piety how the men of those days, the generations that came just after the Trojan War, cursed and deserted their old parents.
!
'
'
For there
is
a passage in Hesiod which reads almost as
if
it
were a direct description of this period of the Migrations, the time when all the old sanctions which guided life have
been broken by the stress of a too great trouble. The passage comes with an effect of interruption in the midst of the story of the Four Ages of Man, the Golden, Silver, Bronzen, and Four they must of course have been but as the poem Iron. now stands, there comes a curious break after the Bronzen
:
Men. They are followed by the Heroes who fought at Thebes and Troy, and they by the Iron race. This looks as if the Heroes were a mere interpolation, and with the Iron Men we returned to the original story. But the description of the Iron Men is in a style different from that of the two earlier races. The Iron Men are not creatures of mere idyllic badness.
Through the dimness
of the half-childish story,
formality of the stiffly poeticized language,
one
through the feels some-
thing of the grit of real
life.
And
it is
;
life
very like that
which we have just been analysing
And struggle of the last migration. the same point of history, the Dark Age which followed fxera ra T/oa>iKa, after the fall of Thebes, Troy, and Mycenae 1 (Erga, 156 ff.).
1
the homeless, godless it is ascribed to just
the Erga.
almost impossible to date the subject-matter of a given part of As we have them, they represent early material, Boeotian, Phocian, and other, in a late Ionized form. See on this point Lectures IV and V below. The story of the Four Ages is probably of dateless antiquity;
It
is
in
HESIOD'S IRON AGE
79
But when the Earth had covered away this race also, then Zeus son of Cronos made yet a fourth upon the land, the divine generation of more righteous and valiant the Heroes, which are called half-gods of early times over the boundless world. Bad war and awful battle some at Seven-Gated Thebes, the land slew them all of the Cadmeans, died battling about the flocks of and some War took in ships over the great Oedipus gulf of the sea to Troy-land for the sake of fair-haired Helen. Where verily the end of death clouded them round. And father Zeus, son of Cronos, gave them a life and
:
familiar places far away from men, settling them at the ends of the world, far from the immortals, and Cronos is king among them. And there they live with hearts untormented, in the Islands of the Blessed, beside deep
eddying ocean, happy Heroes, and the mother of corn them thrice in the year her honey-sweet harvests. Then the Fifth Men would that I had never been among them, but either had died before or been born after For now is a race of iron. And never by day shall they have rest from labour and anguish, nor by night from the spoiler. The gods shall fill them with hard cares The father no more kind to his children, nor the children to their father, nor the guest true to the host that shelters the brother no more dear him, nor comrade to comrade to his brother, as in the old days. Parents shall grow old quickly and be despised, and will turn on their children with a noise of bitter words. Woe upon them and they
bears to
!
. .
hear no more the voice of their gods They will pay not back to their parents in old age the guerdon of their feeding in childhood. Their righteousness in their fists And a man shall sack his brother's walled city. There shall no more joy be taken in the faithful man nor the righteous nor the good they shall honour rather the doer of evils and violence. There shall be a spirit
!
! :
.
the addition of the Heroes and the re-shaping of the Iron Men may possibly have been originally made in Ionia and afterwards taken over into the poetry of the mainland. But the passing of the Arnaioi, Minyai, Lapithai,
fragments of Thracians and Phrygians, &c. through Boeotia would produce and it is simplest to suppose equally well the condition here described that the whole passage, re-shaping and all, is Boeotian or Phocian. The
;
Dark Age
affected the whole of Greece.
80

of striving
m
is
among
miserable men, a spirit ugly-voiced,
glad of
evil,
with hateful eyes.
spirit of striving, I
have called
it
the Greek
17X09,
envy, competition, the struggle for life. But observe that the end is not yet though all normal sanctions have failed, the
;
men
of the Fifth
Age have
still
something to lose
Then at the last, up to Olympus from the widewayed earth, the beautiful faces hidden in white raiment, away to the tribe of the immortals, forsaking man, shall depart Aidos and Nemesis.
How
5
shall
we attempt
to translate the beautiful words
But let that pass for 'Ruth, perhaps, and 'Indignation'. the moment. The time which the prophet feared never came. Those two goddesses never quite fled. They stayed with man in his loneliest and worst hour, and provided, if I read the history aright, the most vital force in the shaping of later Greek ethics and poetry. A full understanding of the word Aidos would take one very far towards the understanding of all the hopes and creations of the Greek poets.
is
usually translated
'
Shame
'
or
Sense of Honour
',
and
Nejutecrts, by an awkward though correct phrase, 'Righteous The great characteristic of both these prinIndignation.'
Honour generally, is that they only come into when there is no compulsion. operation when a man is free If you take people such as these of the Fifth Age, who have
ciples, as of
:
broken away from all their old sanctions, and select among them some strong and turbulent chief who fears no one, you will first think that such a man is free to do whatever enters his head. And then, as a matter of fact, you find that amid his lawlessness there will crop up some possible action which somehow makes him feel uncomfortable. If he has done it, he rues the deed and is haunted by it.
'
'
If he has not done it, he refrains from doing it. And this, not because any one forces him, nor yet because any particular result will accrue to him afterwards. But simply because he feels aidos. No one can tell where the exact point of honour
in
will
c
arise.
AIDOS AND NEMESIS When Achilles fought against

all
:
81
Eetion's
city,
the happy city of the Cilician men, high-gated and slew Eetion but he spoiled him not of his armour. Thebe, He had aidds in his heart for that but he burned him there
;
he sacked
as he lay in his rich-wrought armour, and heaped a mound above him. And all around him there grew elm-trees, planted
by the Mountain Spirits, daughters of Aegis-bearing Zeus.' That is aidos pure and clean, and the latter lines ring with the peculiar tenderness of it. Achilles had nothing to gain, Nobody would have said a word if he had nothing to lose. taken Eetion's richly- wrought armour. It would have been But he happened to feel quite the natural thing to do.
aidos about
it.
:
what you feel about an act of your own Nemesis is what you feel for the act of another. Or, most often, it is what you imagine that others will feel about you. If feel disposed to run away in battle, think of the W/xeo-t? you
Aidos
is
avOptoTtuv
People will put that act to your account.

'
When
'
:
the elders of Troy look upon Helen, if Well,' they say, men fight and die for such a woman as that, ov z>e'/xeo-ty none
Helen herself when she is no human being would expected of course by a goddess be so shameless to go to Paris and let him make love to her
can blame them
(F
156).
:
'
immediately after he has emerged with doubtful honour from his battle with Menelaus, refuses roundly I will
c
:
not go z/e/xeo-crrjTw 6e KZV efy nemesis at' (r 410). When

:
it
would be a thing to
is
feel
Achilles
justly
angered
:
with
none can blame him (I 523) but if he persists after Agamemnon has sued for forgiveness, then there will be nemesis people will be indignant. He
Agamemnon,
at
first
will
know he
is
doing wrong.
(Observe, of course, that
Nemesis does not mean Retribution.) Let us follow this spirit of Nemesis for a moment, and then
return afterwards to her
still more interesting companion. In the above instances the nemesis, the blame or righteous
1
Z 417.
The word used
is
at&as, not aidus
but
in this
connexion
it
comes to the same.
MURRAY
82
in
indignation, has been that of definite witnesses or associates. There are people who have seen your act, and know. But
suppose no one sees. The act, as you know well, remains a thing to feel nemesis about only there is no vtnto-rjTov
:
one there to
feel
it.
Yet,
if
have done and
feel aidos for
you yourself dislike what you it, you inevitably are conscious
that somebody or something dislikes or disapproves of you. You do not look at the sun and the earth with peace and
friendliness.
air
Now,
l
to an early Greek, the earth, water,
and
were
full of living
eyes
of theoi, of daimones, of keres.
One
early poet
full of
them that there
says emphatically that the air is so crowded is no room to put in the spike of an
Hesiod and Homer count no escape from them. And it is they who have seen you and dislike you for the thing which you have done The word Nemesis very soon passes away from the sphere of definite human blame. Coarser and more concrete words are used for that oreffiea, \ôyot. Nemesis is the haunting impalpable blame of the Earth and Sun, the Air, the Gods, the Dead. Observe, it is not the direct anger of the injured
ear of corn without touching one.
them by myriads.
There
is
person
it is
the blame of the third person
Now
let us
be clear about one point.
who saw. You will sometimes
find writers
who ought to know better expressing themselves about these matters in a misleading way. They say, or
imply, that when a Greek spared an enemy, he did not do it from mercifulness or honour as we understand the words, but because it was a part of his religion that Zeus would have
This
a grudge against him and punish him if he did otherwise. may be true of a given superstitious individual. But
as regards the race
it is
putting the effect for the cause.
It
was the emotion

belief.
of the race that first created the religious
If
man who wronged
the early Greeks believed that Zeus hated the a suppliant, that belief was not based on
1 Bergk. fr. adesp. 2, reading d0*>, as is shown to be right by the quotation in Aeneas of Gaza (p. 399 E).- See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena,
p.
170, note.
in
ACTIONS THAT CAUSE AID6S
83
any observed behaviour on the part of Zeus. It was merely that they themselves hated the man who did so, and felt
that their god must hate him. There are, then, certain actions which cause the feelings ;of aidos and nemesis, of shame or ruth when a man thinks
i
I
of doing them them done by
others.
himself, of righteous indignation when he sees Let us notice more closely what these
actions generally are.
How far, for
instance,
do they coincide
with the objects of our

1
own, or the mediaeval, feeling of
ihat imply cowardice

'
:
and most obvious, there are the actions they bring the simplest and crudest Put in shame Aidos, ye Ar gives, will ye not stand ? hearts aidos and nemesis, ... I would not rail against your one that was a weakling, for holding back in battle but you I have nemesis against you in my heart are chieftains
honour
?
'
First
'
'
'
(N 120
ff.).
:
lying and perjury. Secondly, actions that imply falseness I doubt if the word ever occurs in this sense in Homer, but
that
is
because questions of false swearing never arise
among
in the
Homeric heroes.
The
false stories told
by Odysseus
The treason of Pandaros is something which that hero might have felt shame for had he lived. The poet himself seems a little ashamed of mentionOdyssey are merely ruses of war.
ing such behaviour on the part of a hero, even a hostile hero, and arranges as usual to lay the real guilt upon a god. Homeric
heroes do not need the aidos which prevents or

ness.
'
rues
'
false-
But
it
is
common enough
in
Hesiod and Theognis
and
in tragedy.
Thirdly, actions that imply impudence or lack of reverence.
words above quoted are in boldness of Niobe in boasting herself against the goddess Leto (& 602 ff.), or the impudence of Thersites in the second book of the Iliad.
All these
what we may loosely term The cases are few Helen's So no doubt would be the point.
:
might be included as objects

' '
:
of
any current
but there is a fourth sense, by far conception of Honour he most widespread and significant, which reaches a good
G 2
84
\ deal
/of

beyond the ordinary mediaeval
ideal.
m
the horror
It
is
cruelty or treachery towards the helpless. Any sympathetic reader of early Greek poetry will have noticed the importance,
almost the sanctity, attached to three classes of
human beings
What is there in strangers, suppliants, and old people. common between the three ? Nothing, I think, but their Realize what a stranger is, in a primitive helplessness. He is a man with no home, no friends, no one to society. protect him from injury, no one to avenge him afterwards.
He
own
has not even his

tribal god.
man
or
own sanctuaries to shelter him, or his And again, a suppliant a suppliant is any woman who formally casts away all means of self:
defence and throws

the essential thing
helpless
;
himself
upon your mercy.

of course,
That
is
though
when he
could, the
ways.
sacred.
man tried to influence your feelings in divers other He associated himself with something that you held He sat on the steps of an altar he touched some
:
:
^V
jg
sacred object he lay on your door-step and threatened to starve unless you took him in he contrived with his hand But those are all accessories. .to touch your face or your beard.
;
&
>VX The
^>
essential
is
confessed helplessness.
And
all
their litera-
what horror the early Greeks felt at the notion of and formally rejecting a prayer made by the helpless, definitely a horror sometimes amounting to what we should call moral
ture shows
weakness.
'
guage.
'
Zeus
is
They expressed this generally in theological lanThe stranger and the suppliant come from Zeus.' the watcher of stranger and suppliant (c 270)
'
;
'
The very Thunderer
follows the atSotoy
l/cerr/?'
(77
164, 181)
his
own
titles are 'IKCÔ-IOS-
And
thirdly,
and Eciiwos.1 old people. Here there enters
in,
no doubt,
;
some element
of the patriarchal sanctity of a father
but
I think that the helplessness of age is again the main reason for an old man or woman being alboios. That explains
why they
It explains
are, like beggars, strangers, suppliants, especially
under the guardianship
why
1
of the gods, and in particular of Zeus. the older they are the more is their claim on
Z*i>s 'A0//CTO-P,
On
see Lecture
X,
p. 247.
in
Aidos
:
PERSONS
why
if
WHO CAUSE
is
AIDOS
1
85
It
the blind are classed with them.

helplessness
may
be
objected that,
the criterion, children also

is
would be
alboloi.
The answer
interesting.
Ordinary
children are not specially aiSoioi, or charged with sanctity, because they have their grown-up relations to protect them.
f
But orphan children are. There are some five deadly sins, says Hesiod in the Erga, of which you cannot say that one is worse than another.
They
are all
It
is
beyond the pale (Erga, 327

all
ff.)
the man who does evil to a the man who goeth into his suppliant and to a stranger brother's bed the man who in heartlessness sins against orphan children the man who reviles his old father on the bitter threshold of age, laying hold of him with with that man Zeus himself is wroth. hurting words
as
one thing
These
sins consist of four offences against the lielpless
and
one breach of a fundamental family taboo. All adultery was a most grave offence. But if this particular form of
is the doing of Aidos. Your and is often at your mercy. That is brother trusts you, what makes him sacred. For apart from any question of wrong acts done to them, there are certain classes of people more alboloi, objects of There are people in whose presence a aidos, than others.
it is
chosen as the worst, that
man
feels
shame, self-consciousness, awe, a sense keener than
usual of the importance of behaving well. And what sort of people chiefly excite this aidos ? Of course there are
kings, elders
and
feel
/3ao-iAr/69, yepoz/res,
you naturally
is
alboloi and ambassadors and the like all of them people for whom reverence, and whose good or bad opinion
sages, princes
:
of early
important in the world. Yet, if you notice the language Greek poetry, you will find that it is not these people,
but quite others,
who
are most deeply charged, as
it
were,
1 Cf. Soph. O. T. 374-7, where commentators, from not seeing this point, have altered the text. Oed. Thou art a child of unbroken night, so that neither I nor any other who sees the light would (av) ever harm thee.' Tir. It is not my doom to fall by thy hand,' &c. So MSS., and cf. 448 below, where Tiresias repeats the same statement.
' c
86 with aidos
of

;
in
before
whom you feel
still
more keenly conscious

ill
r
opinion w eighs somehow inexplicably more in the last account. The disinherited of the earth, the injured, the helpless, and among
your unworthiness, and whose good or
them the most
utterly helpless of
all,
the dead. 1
All these^
the dead, the stranger, the beggar, the orphan, the merely unhappy, are from the outset euSotot, 'charged with ai8o>s.'
Wrong them, and they become,

word
of their
ipso facto
and without any
own, ApaToi or TrpoorpoTratot, incarnate curses, 2 things charged with the wrath of God. The feeling seems to have been very strong. One must
bring
it into connexion with the various stories of gods who were disguised as beggars, and went through the world ill
by different men according to their different the counterpart of what we, in our modern natures. and scientific prose, call a sense of social responsibility
or well entreated
It
is
c '
or the like
the feeling roused more or less in most people
by the existence of great misery in our wealthy societies. To the Greek poet it was not scientific, and it was not prose. It was an emotion, the keener because it was merely instinctive an emotion and was felt by a peculiarly sensitive people
;
the dead body of one that hated you ? the wise His goodness is more to me than his asked in the Ajax ; The stranger hate is the answer, an answer full of aidos (Ajax, 1357). and the beggar are charged with aidos/ says Eumaeus in the Odyssey, and the adjective cw'Sofos is a regular epithet of a stranger. But mere A miserable man must needs rouse aidos in you,' unhappiness is enough
1
'
Do you
is
'
feel aidos for
'
Odysseus
'
says Oedipus (0. C. 247). 2 it turning oneself towards ', as L. and S. say npoarpoiraios is not the adjective from vpoarpoirrj which is the opposite of airoTpoirij, is As you can by sacrifice, &c., .try to avert the daipovas aversion.'
*
:
'
'
you can bring them upon somebody. Thus an injured suppliant has he brings down tJie gods upon his injurer. A a power of npoarponrj criminal brings them down on himself and those who are infected by his These words are very often misunderstood e. g. the fyOoyyov dpaTov ayos. OIKOIS of Iphigenia (Ag. 237) was not a spoken curse which would make the passage hideous but the mere crying of a murdered daughter, which So when Philoctetes charges Neoptolemus necessarily involves an dpd. rov irpoffTpoiraiov, TOI> iKtryv, & oxtrKif ; he to look him in the face means Me, charged with the wrath of God ; me, who kneel before thee, O hard heart' (Phil. 930).
so
:
'
'
in
of
LATER HISTORY OF AID6S

;
87
shame and awe, and perhaps something like guilt, in a feeling meeting the eyes of the oppressed of the earth that a wrong done to these men is like no other wrong ; that
what these men report
will
outweigh
all
of you ultimately in the ear of Zeus the acute comments of the world and the
1 gratifying reports of your official superiors.
If you look into the history of later Greek Ethics, it is rather a surprise to find how small a place is occupied by Aidos. Even to Plato and Aristotle it has become little
more than an amiable

ticularly repulsive.
quality, the absence of
which
is
par-
It has quite ceased to be the guiding

life.
force of men's moral
These two philosophers, of course,

:
belong to a particular school

intellectual
;
they are aristocratic and both perhaps too much inclined to despise those emotions which appeal to man's simplest instincts and have
a touch of the animal in them.
If
we
possessed any complete
books by the more democratic and

sophers,
less authoritarian philo-
especially and Democritus, our imbe different. Among the philosophers of the pression might Roman period Aidos has quite faded away. It plays no part in Epictetus. It is barely mentioned by Sextus Empiricus.
by Protagoras
One can
see the reason for this

is
indeed, the
many
reasons.
a mere emotion, and therefore A man may incalculable, arbitrary, devoid of principle. not to feel the emotion, and then you have nothing happen
For one thing Aidos
it happens that slaves are never spoken charged with aidos. A particular slave may be treated with aidos. He may be protected and helped because he is a stranger or a beggar. But the word is not regularly applied to a slave. I think the reason is, as Why speak of ruth where ruthlessness is the law ? Euripides says, The whole institution was a negation of Aidos ; a refusal to listen to the emotion in question. If you made a man your slave, that showed you did not regard him with aidos. So the less said about it the better. As the Ocean Spirits in the Prometheus tell us with a different meaning the clank of the riveting of a prisoner's fetters frightens Aidos away (Prom. 134). Of course a wrong done to a slave was hated by the gods and, one might hope, duly avenged. But that was the same with animals. Efoi xai KVVWV
1
have sometimes wondered how
of as
'
'
ipivvfs
there
is
vengeance
Atfc-rj,
in
heaven
for
ramifications of Ai5ws,
"Op/to's,
&c., see
an injured dog. Appendix D.
On
the
88

Or again,
if
to appeal to.
of
he has the emotion, there is no way An emotion which is made the strength. judging whole moving principle of conduct grows with what it feeds upon it is never sated it moves towards the infinite. That
its
:
way madness lies, as the lives of so many of the saints have shown us. Besides, behind any morality based upon emotion there is the question whether you ought or ought not in a and if not, why not ? particular case to feel the emotion The It is there that the real principle of Ethics comes in. later philosophers wanted to understand, not merely to feel. They had to build up conduct into a consistent rational system. It would help them little if men said, Follow the Love your neighbour,' Pity humanity.' leading of Aidos.' Such rules will help the conduct of men. But they do not provide an answer to a speculative problem. Perhaps the main thing which the philosophers got from Aidos was
:
'
'
'
Aristotle's doctrine of the
Mean
the observation that in
any emotion or any movement there is a possible best point, which you should strive to attain and shrink from passing. An uninspiring doctrine, it may be, with the emotion all gone from it. But that was what served Aristotle's purpose best. Again, there is an historical reason for the decline in the
importance
of Aidos. Aidos, like Honour, is essentially the a wild and ill-governed society, where there is not virtue of much effective regulation of men's actions by the law. It is
essentially the thing that
is left
when
all
other sanctions
fail
the last of the immortals to leave a distracted world.
In an
ordered society there are all the more concrete sanctions to appeal to the police, the law, organized public opinion.
In a well- organized society large numbers of men, perhaps the majority, are under compulsion to behave better than they naturally would, if left to themselves. It often strikes me,
in certain parts of early
of
Greek poetry, that one gets a glimpse a society in which, by the breaking up of ordered life, men were compelled to be worse than nature intended where
;
good and merciful men had to do things which they hated afterwards to remember. You recall the character in Hero-
in
dotus,
1
ROMAN AND GREEK

who wished
to be the
89
most righteous man in the world, circumstances. As a rule in fiction but was not permitted by (where motives of flattery cannot come into play) rich men are
It
is
obviously more interesting, as well as more make them so. But in gratifying to the reader's feelings, to Homer the rich men are apt to be specially virtuous aêtoswicked.
:
a^v^v,
'rich
and blameless' (E
9).
One
is
reminded
of
the naive desire of the old poet Phokylides, a competence and then to practice virtue.
first
to acquire
The
so
amusing to us, as it was to Plato. Yet result of that scheme of life.

'
We know
much
project is of the
think of that son of
Teuthras in the Iliad, who dwelt behind the strong walls of Arisbe, rich in all livelihood, and was beloved of men. For he built his dwelling by the roadside and showed love to all who
2 Conceivably he had made some vow, so to spend his passed.' life in feeding the hungry and washing the feet of strangers.
But, in any case, it is easy to imagine how, in a time like that of the Migrations, a decent man who had passed through the horrid necessities of the struggle for bare life, and was at
and prosperous with a strong wall around him, would become just like these rich men in Homer, thankful to live at last blameless and gentle towards gods and men. The suggestion is little more than a fancy. But it occurs
last
safe
to
me
in connexion with another.
When we compare
and
of
the
Rome, we are other differences, with some broad general struck, among many divergence. The Roman seems to have all the faults and
civilization
and character
of Greece
the virtues of successful men.

disciplined,
He
is
severe, strong, well-
trustworthy, self-confident, self-righteous, unimaginative and cruel, a heavy feeder, a lover of gladiatorial games. The Greek, less gregarious, less to be relied upon,
more swept by impulse now dying heroically for lost causes now, at the very edge of heroism, swept by panic and escaping with disgrace capable of bitter hatreds and massacres in but hot blood, of passionate desires and occasional orgies
;
instinctively hating cruelty, revolting

1
from the
2
Roman
shows,
Herodotus,
iii.
142.
Z 15.
90

:
frugal, simple
and hardy to a degree which we can with diffiabove all possessed of an unusual power of seeing beyond himself and of understanding his enemies caring for intellect, imagination, freedom, beauty, more than for force and organization, crying aloud for orderliness and symmetry,
culty realize
;
because he
knew
his
own needs and
his
own dangers
much
as Plato prayed to be delivered from poetry because poetry was to him a seducing fire. The causes of such a difference
are innumerable.
of
There was no doubt a greater proportion elements in Greek civilization. There were pre- Aryan important geographical differences. But one cause, I think,
is
the early experience of the Greek race during the great
têa-migrations.
of
The Romans had an almost steady history

:
the Greeks at the beginning passed through the very fires of hell. They knew, what Rome as a whole did not know, the inward meaning and the reverse side of glory. They knew the
of their history
conquest and well- won success
bitterness of lost battles, the sting of the master's lash
they
knew
self -judgement
and self-contempt, amazement and
despair.
among
there
I suppose, be counted, even politically, the successful races of mankind. But in their highest
They must,
successes, in the times

is
both of Pericles and of Alexander, always something dreamlike and transient. Their their little cities armies are always fighting against odds
;
trying
of
by
sheer energy
and
intellect to
stem the strength
great military empires.
It
is
a wondrous fabric held
together for an hour by some splendid grasp of human genius, not one based on strong material foundations by the gregarious
and half-conscious
life
efforts of
as a people,
it
would seem,
average men. They began their in a world where palaces and
temples were shattered, armies overthrown, laws and familiar gods brought to oblivion. Thus, like the prophet in Callimachus' great poem, they saw early the world that is behind
the ordinary world of
intangible
:
human
strivings,
more
real
and more
this ideal
and throughout
their history
somehow
haunted the
them
race, a vision perturbing their sight, unfitting continued empire, yet shedding strangely over their defeat a splendour denied to their conquerors.
for
IV
AN ANCIENT TRADITIONAL BOOK

So far we have been considering the people I wish now to turn to the literature. For one of the clearest facts that
:
we know about
the
soil
these driven fragments of society who form from which Hellenism sprang is that they must have
had a
literature.
The vast
store of prehistoric
tradition
preserved in the
Greek heroic saga is evidence enough. The Northerners may not have known the art of writing before
they learned
it
in Greece.
But
it is
certain that in very
early times they possessed Epic lays, and that these lays were in dactylic verse. So much we can conclude from
various formulae imbedded in the Homeric language. On the other side, the Cretan script, coming on the top of other
evidence which was already sufficient, shows that long before wise men in the the Migrations there were scribes and
'
'
Aegean who had the power

I
of writing.
am
not proposing to discuss the Homeric Question, but
rather to put forward some general considerations preliminary If the men of the Migrations to the Homeric Question.
possessed a literature, that literature was not what we mean by Homer', viz. the Iliad and the Odyssey. It was much more nearly what the Greeks of the sixth and early fifth
'
centuries
meant by Homer ', viz. the whole body of heroic tradition as embodied in hexameter verse. 1 It must really have been something more primitive and less differentiated,
'
of
which the didactic epos, the
lists of
ancestors, the local
chronicles, the theological, magical, as well as the heroic poems, are so
and philosophical writings,
many
specialized developi,
1 See my History of Ancient Greek Literature, chap, mowitz, Homerische Untersuchungen, pp. 329-80.
or, better,
Wila-
92
ments.
iv
It has long been clear to students of early Greece that the Iliad and Odyssey are not primitive poems. Not only their art and construction, but their whole outlook on
the world and the gods
is
far
removed from that
of the
most
primitive Greeks known to us. Both poems, indeed, contain but both, as they a great deal of extremely ancient matter It are the products of a long process of development. stand,
:
the pre- Homeric literature that we are now considering. Let us begin by trying to imagine the position and practice in an early society of what the Greeks generally described as
is
Ao'ytos avrip, or
'
man
'
of
words \ l
I say
'
words
'
because
an adequate translation of Logoi. The conception Logos, word or speech ', had, as we all know, a It was peculiarly distinguished history among the Greeks. the word spoken it was the power of language it was the word which implies reason, persuasion, interpretation, and which settles differences instead of the armed hand it was thus the word which mediates between the soul of man and man, or, in theological language, between man and God to the philosopher it was the silent but eternal word upon the lips of Nature, the speech by which the Cosmos expressed its inborn reason. But for our present purpose it is another of the Logos that comes into play. The Logios Aner, aspect or Man of Words, was the man who possessed the Tilings Said, or traditions, which made up the main sum of man's knowledge. He knew what Logoi really existed, and what were mere inventions or mistakes. He could say Ao'yos icrriv, 2
I despair of
' '
:
much as a Hebrew could say It is written And this Man of Words would in many cases not trust entirely to his memory, but would make a permanent Logos of his own in the shape
'
'.
of a book.
book in those days was not what it is now. It was not a thing to be given to the public, not a thing to be read for
1
Scr also Prof. Butcher's Lecture on

'
The Written and the Spoken Word

was
it
'
in Sortie Aspects of the Greek Genius. 2 Ar. Frogs, 1052 What I said about Phaedra,
:
not an &v
'
Ao-yos ?
iv
1
AN ANCIENT BOOK
93
One can find parallels in the East or in the Middle There was the great book of Michael Scott, the magiAges. cian, which was read by no man but one, and was buried
pleasure.
in its master's grave. chronicles, the rule of
There
which
is
the great list of Arabic that each chronicle was the

is
property of the author or of his heir, and could not be read by others without his permission. There are the innumerable
and constantly varying MSS. of stories like the Arabian Nights, each copy originally meant to be the private stockIn all these cases the in-trade of a professional story-teller. man lived by his book. It must be kept from the public
;
above
It
all, it
must be kept from the eyes
of professional rivals.
disciple,
'
can be given or bequeathed to a son or a favourite
as in the Greek story one of Homer's scrolls, the Cypria ', served as his daughter's dowry, another, the 'Taking of
Oechalia
',
was
left to his heir,
Creophylus.
For the ancient
1 All through antiquity a book remained a thing to be recited from, or to be read aloud to an audience by a skilled person. It is partly due to facts like this that the oral repetition of stories continued so extremely
late in
human
history to be the normal
way
of keeping alive the records
of the past, even if the past was vitally important. In the case of the Gospels, for instance, where a modern would have considered it of abso-
lutely
overwhelming importance to have a written record as soon as
possible of the exact deeds and sayings of the Master, we find, as a matter of fact, that it was left for a considerable time to oral tradition. Compare
the well-known phrase of Papias, deliberately preferring a third-hand oral report to the written word
:
my way, who had been a follower of the would inquire about the discourses of those elders, what was said by. Andrew or by Peter or by Philip or by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, or what Aristion and the Elder John, disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think I could get so much profit from the contents of books as from the utterings of a living and abiding voice.' (I cite from Estlin Carpenter's First Three Gos'pels, p. 4. ) In the time of Papias there were libraries with books by the hundred thousand, yet a book is still to him a dead and troublesome mode of communication. He is said to have been rather a stupid man, trdw ffiwcpbi rov vovv. But a thousand years earlier than Papias this attitude of mind was the normal one. 2 Cf. the case of Jendeus de Brie, author of the Bataille Loquifer, cent, xii he wrote the poem, kept it carefully, taught it to no man, and made much gain out of it in Sicily where he sojourned, and left it to his son when he died.' Similar statements are made about Huon de Villeneuve, who
Whenever any person came
Elders, I
*
:
94
iv
Man of Words was not exactly a story-teller, not exactly a chroniHe was all three, and something cler, not exactly a magician.
more also. His Logos contained, with no distinction of subject, all that he specially wanted not to forget, or, at least, all that was worth the immense trouble of writing down, letter by letter. There was an ancient Greek tradition, superseded in general by the Cadmus story, which somehow connected the invention of writing with Orpheus and the Muses. Orpheus' voice seems to have recorded itself in books in some mysterious way. 1 And the Greek bards always owe, not only what
we should
'.
call their inspiration,
but their actual knowledge

' '
are present and know all the daughters of They things 2 Hesiod professes, roughly speaking, to be able Memory.' to sing about everything but he always explains that he
of facts to the Muses.
The Muses
are, to Hesiod at least,
is
dependent on the Muses for
his
knowledge.
:
Other sources
knowledge are indeed recognized. When giving the names of all the rivers in the wôrld, Hesiod stops at a certain point and says that for the names of the rest you had better consult
of
tell
on their banks, and they will be able to you (Theog. 370). But most often he consults the Muses So does Homer (Theog. 1 ff., 105 ff., 966, 1022, Catalogues). for such subjects as the Catalogue of the Greek army (cf. a 7,
the people
live
who
B 486, 761, cf. M 176). One suspects that that consultation was often carried out by the bard retiring to some lonely
maybe barricading the door of his hut, bringing forth a precious roll, and laboriously spelling out the difficult lettermarks, r/ad/x/xara, the Greeks called them, or 'scratches'.
place, or
And
right on in mid-classical
'
and
later times the
name
for
3
',
a scholar was
grammatikos
'.
He was
a
'
man of grammata
'
one who could deal with these strange scratches and read them aloud, knowing where one word ended and another
would not part from
other poets.
1
his
poem
for horses or furs or for

i.
any
price,
and about
1,
Gautier's fipopees Francises, vol.

his Age.
\
|
p. 215,
note
cited in
Lang, Homer and

2
::
ras 'O/M/>m Karypaif/v for subjects, 100-15. Tkeogony, 54, 916 See Rutherford's Scholia Aristophanica, vol.
Oprjffffats fv aaviaiv,
:
yijpvs,
Eur. Ale. 967-9.
iii.
chap.
i.
iv
THE GRAMMATA
pauses. the grammata.
95
little
began, and when to make big pauses things like that were not indicated in You will have noticed that a wise the same is true of the Middle Ages
disciple attached to him. disciple
and
For
And
in antiquity and generally has a boy or the first thing which that
' '
man
learns
read in his
when he begins to be wise himself is to master's book. Not in any book, mark you.
They did not learn reading in that way. You were not expected to understand the grammata unless they were first read aloud to you. The case is clearest with Semitic books, where the vowels are not written at all, and in some cases
the meaning cannot possibly be made out for certain without help from the writer of the book. But it was the same in the Middle Ages with Michael Scott's book, for instance. It was the same with various of the old Sanskrit books, the
:
meaning
of
which has in some places been absolutely
lost
because there was a breach in the series of disciples to whom the meaning was orally explained by the master. The thing
that most tangibly constituted a disciple was the power to handle, or to read in, his master's book. Of course a very
clever
to
man
make out
would, if you gave him time, be able eventually other books too. But that would be a special
if
undertaking. This limitation,

first
you think
of
it,
is
inevitable.
In the
place there will probably be no other books in the neighbourhood on which to practise. Then further, it must be
remembered, that as the man's book

also is his
differ
;
is
a private thing, so
method
of
making
signs.
and the handwriting of a man saw any other person's handwriting and who used
merely to
Handwritings always who practically never

his
own
make
notes for his
by
others,
would be sure
private use, not to be read even apart from the writer's own
to
I
own
conscious wish for secrecy

specialized
and abnormal.
grow in a hundred little ways have seen an Arabic book which
1 professes to give the special alphabets used

1
by the ancient
Ancient Alphabets, by
Ahmad
bin
*
Joseph Hammer, London, 1806.
Abubekr bin Wahshih, translated by Every one of these kings invented,
96

'
iv
sages, Cleomenes, Plato, Pythagoras, Scalinus, Socrates, and in order that none should Aristotle, all of them different, know them but the sons of wisdom.'
Consider, then, the position of a
man who
possesses such
a book, and also can make grammata himself. Suppose he hears news of strange events which he would like to record
accurately.
Suppose he
is
is
wise
man expounding new

his
lucky enough to hear another lore, or giving details on a subject
vague. Suppose he finds, or borrows, or inherits from a wise relation -wisdom runs in families--
where
own book
another bookjcbntaining valuable information.

cases he will
r
In
all
these
want to make additions and changes in his own book. Let us consider how he is likely to set about it. It is a difficult process to conflate two or more accounts of a transaction into one, difficult even for a modern writer, with all the battery of modern appliances at his command clear print, numbered pages, indices to show you just where and how often a subject is mentioned, paragraphs and chapters, divisions of words and sentences, and abundance of cheap paper for making notes and rough copies. Our ancient sage had his book written on very expensive material, usually the
;
skins of beasts carefully prepared. He could not lightly throw away a scroll and write it again. He had no facilities
for finding references
;
divisions of sentences,
no index, no pages, no chapters, no no divisions of any sort between one
word and another
only one long undivided mass of grammata, not by their nature well calculated to be legible. On the other hand, he probably knew his own book by heart. It was an advantage which sometimes betrayed him.
;
generally did was to add the new matter crudely end of the old. He could write on the margin or between the lines. At a pinch, he might cut the hide with a knife and sew in a new strip at a particular place. He
at the
according to his own genius and understanding, a particular alphabet in order that none should know them but the sons of wisdom (p. 14). Are the sons of wisdom the disciples of the wise ? The book is said to
'
' '
What he
have been written An. Heg. 241.
It
is
concerned with alchemy.
iv
GROWTH OF A TRADITIONAL BOOK

to
97
had only
one
fit
who
the roll intelligible to himself. And any has had experience of the difference between a MS.
make
and a MS. that will do to lecture what that means. No book has come down to us from antiquity exactly in All the books that we possess have at some time this state. been published, and therefore prepared in some sense to be But many Greek books retain clear intelligible to the reader. marks of the time when they were not meant to be read by
to be sent to the printer
will appreciate
from
strangers, but only to serve the professional needs of the writer. The later Homeric hymns, containing merely a number
of suitable
clearly to the
openings and closes for recitations, point pretty handbook of the professional reciter. The
voluminous writings of the Peripatetic school which come to us under the name of Aristotle bear innumerable traces of their
composition for private use in the school.
of
So do the remains
of the late
are, I
Hesiod
so do, as far as I
know them, most
magical writings. believe, even clearer.
In oriental literatures the instances
In imagining the proceedings of this old sage we have taken one particular crisis, as it were, in the history of his book. But all the ancient traditional books which have come
down
such
crises.
to us have, without exception, passed through many The book which contained the whole Logos of
;
man was apt to be long-lived. It was precious it had been very difficult to write it was made of expensive and durable materials. It became an heirloom and with
the wise
;
:
each successive owner, with each successive great event in the history of the tribe or the community, the book was
For the most jealously guarded book had, of course, its relation to the public. It was the source of stories and lays which must needs be
changed, expanded, and expurgated.
of oracles and charms and moral injunctions which must not seem ridiculous or immoral of statements in history and better not be demongeography which had
interesting
strably false.
The book must needs grow
as its people grew.
98

it
iv
became a part of the people's tradition, a thing handed down from antiquity and half sacred, it had a great normal claim on each new generation of hearers. They were ready
As
it with admiration, with reverence, with enjoyment, provided only that it continued to make some sort of tolerable terms with their tastes, under which general head we must
to accept
include their consciences and their

I
common
sense.
tempted what I mean by a traditional book. But the conOur traditional books are ditions have changed too much. hittaker's Almanac and collections of mere information like or those strange prophetic Almanacs the Statesman's Yearbook, and magic Herbals which continue, I suppose, to enjoy a
illustrate
am
to take instances
from our own times to
nations.
though subterranean existence in all European found a magic herbal in a Welsh inn in the year 1884 which had reached something like its hundredth edition. Or we might take the various Guides to Navigation published
flourishing
I
by various
countries.
The
Pilot series, issued

;
by the
British
1 Admiralty, seems now to hold the field but M. Victor Berard from a remote past, through has traced its origin step by step
French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and perhaps Phoenician sources. An historical lawyer, again, could show
the same process of traditional growth in various legal codes. It may be objected that all these instances are in the
nature of handbooks, not of artistic literature. And handbooks of course need bringing up to date. True. But the fact is that we have only recently specialized the handbook
in this
5
way, and exiled
it
from the Muses.
The
real
Muses
did not recognize any generic difference between a handbook and an epic poem. Think of the Catalogues in Hesiod. But,
tional
apart from that, there are many cases to be quoted of TradiBooks in other styles of literature.
There
is
the series of Arabic chronicles mentioned above.
They reach over many centuries, and have been developed by a regular process. A man who wished to write a chronicle
had
first
to approach the possessor of

1
an existing chronicle
i.
Lea Pheniciens
et
VOdysaee,
p. 52.
iv
EXAMPLES OF TRADITIONAL BOOKS

for his igaza or authorization.
If
99
it,
and ask
he gave
he
read his book aloud to the applicant, or allowed the applicant Then the new chronicle was made to read it aloud to him.
up out
of the old
one on the following system.
Where the
new
scribe copies his text, he does so with almost verbal accuracy, so much so that Arabic scholars can use the copy
to correct errors of text in
MSS.
of the original.
But to
prevent the book becoming too huge, he leaves out masses of early history or other less important matter and adds his
own more modern

it
history, or
more
interesting matter,
where
Obviously the opportunities for falsification are How far they are utilized I cannot say. But considerable.
in.
comes
the quality,
it
from anything
seems, that distinguishes these Arabic chronicles else of the kind known to me is the extra-
ordinary care with which each writer quotes not only his immediate authority for a story or tradition, but the whole chain of authorities from the origin downward. No tradition
really complete that cannot produce its entire genealogy, up eventually to an eye-witness.
leading
(is Perhaps the best instance in Greek literature is the curious work which comes to us under the name of Callisthenes' Life
of
of
It is the source of all the mediaeval romances and old translations of it are extant in Latin Alexander, one made in the fourth century and one in the tenth Syriac,
Alexander.
Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Persian, Turkish, Malay, Siamese, and doubtless other languages. The basis in each case is
a word-for-word translation, but in every language the substance varies for it was told in each country by jongleurs
;
and
story-tellers
who added,
omitted, and altered with a view
to their audience.
For instance, Alexander is usually in accordance with mediaeval taste made the child of a secret amour between his mother, Olympias, and the exiled wizard Of whatever country is most king of ... Of what ? The earliest version was likely to please the audience. written by an Egyptian Greek. Consequently Alexander
begins as a son of Nectanebos, king of Egypt. Then he is a Persian, and so on. One version, in Ethiopic, leaves him
100
iv
the son of his proper father, Philip, but makes Philip a Christian martyr, who committed suicide on hearing from a prophet that some day the Creator of the world would be
crucified.
not only the different translations that vary. As one Every copy of the book differs from every other. Like the MSS. of the Niebeluneditor, Meusel, puts it
it
is
'
:
But
The every MS. represents a different recension.' combined the offices of scribe writers,' says Karl Miiller,
genlied,
'
and
author.'
That exactly expresses
it.
Each
scribe
who
earned his living by it made it as good, as edifying, as entertaining a history as he could. The book became a thing of 1 tradition, and grew with the ages.
The
oldest version seems to have been written in Greek,
So much can be in Egypt, in the time of the Ptolemies. made out. It professes to be the work of the philosopher
who accompanied Alexander on and whose real works have perished. 2 We campaigns, can also trace with some probability an earlier stage of the same story viz. a series of imaginary letters, between Alexander and his friends, composed by some sophist in Egypt
Callisthenes, a real person,
his
:
not long after Alexander's death. I will not speak of the mediaeval epics, the Niebelungenlied, the Arthur Legends, or the great French epics centring in the
Chanson de Roland. Each one of these subjects has its own but each one would peculiarities and special difficulties Let me merely quote illustrate our main thesis equally well. some words of Gaston Paris to illustrate the nature of a He is speaking of the controversy whether traditional book. of the Song of Roland had ever seen the valley the author The of Roncesvaux, where the scene of his battle is placed.
;
'
great savant answers
at a given
1 2
The Song of Roland is not a work composed in one effort moment. It comprises in itself elements of very
See Appendix E.
The Pseudo-Callistkenes.
by
interesting fragment of Callisthenes has lately been discovered, cited Didymus on Demosthenes. (Teubner, 1907. A papyrus.)
An
iv
THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

;
101
Some go back to the immediate different date and origin. others have impression of the event which it celebrates been introduced in the course of centuries by professional poets, who invented wholesale episodes calculated to increase the interest of the poem and develop its power of heroic and national inspiration. The name of the author of the Song of Roland is Legion. And among those who, from the seventh to the eleventh century, would have the right to rise and answer any appeal addressed to that author, it would be very rash to affirm that not one had ever passed by Roncesvaux, at a period when so many people used that road.
.
.
How many
in the
controversies about
x
!
Homer might be answered
same words
The best parallel for our present purpose is, I think, that Hebrew scriptures. I often wonder that the comparison has not been more widely used by Greek scholars. The scientific study of the Old Testament has been carried out with remarkable candour and ability by many Semitic scholars of the last two generations. The results of their researches are easily accessible the main results may be
of the
;
said, in
a sense, to be practically certain. You cannot, indeed, say with certainty in any particular place of difficulty, This is what happened but you can very often say with cer'
J
the sort of thing that must have happened.' The subject is one of great interest. I fear, however, that I shall not in this lecture make it appear so. Interest depends
tainty,
'
This
is
on
details and I am compelled to content myself with the merest bald outline of the main facts about the growth of
;
the Pentateuch.
Some
of
you
will
have heard
it all
before.
Others will require much more detailed explanation. I must ask both parties to grant me some indulgence in steering a middle course.
ment
"*The central voice and the informing spirit of the Old Testais the Book of Deuteronomy. all know its main
We
an insistence on a and an avoidance of monotheism,

characteristics
:
rigid
all
p.
and highly
ff.
spiritual
:
remains of idolatry
See also Appendix
Gaston Paris, Legendes du Moyen Age, on the Roland and the Vie de St. Alexis.
46
102
iv
a great system of law, governing in a theocratic spirit all the details of life, and resulting in an ideal too strict, and in some ways too high, to have ever been carried out in
lastly, for the sake of this purity of religion and morals, which was associated with the conception of the Jews as Yahweh's peculiar people, and the Temple at Jeru-
practice
salem as the one seat of correct ritual and doctrine, an intolerant condemnation of all other places of worship, however
sacred,
and a ferocious dread
of all foreign elements
which
might corrupt the orthodoxy of the chosen race. Deuteronomy was found in the Temple by certain sacred
persons
year of
tion.
we are not told who had put it there in the eighteenth 2 Kings xxii. 8 ff.). It was King Josiah (B. c. 621
:
accepted at once as the standard of a great religious reformaJosiah supported the Deuteronomists, and the reformawas successfully carried through. Now among the other tasks which the reformers had before them was the re-editing of the ancient traditional books of the people. They needed reform in countless ways. Both of them, indeed, must have been originally pagan, and polytheistic. I say both rather than all ', because in the main we can distinguish two great documents, which have been welded by the Deuteronomists into the narrative of the Pentateuch. One of the most obvious differences between them is that in one God is called Elohim the word translated God in our version, though
tion
*
'
'
'
'
'
'
it is
really a plural
in the other he
is
called
Yahweh, or
Jehovah, the special unspeakable name of the Hebrew God,

translated in our version
called
'
The Lord '. The documents are and Elohist ', or J and E respectively. J seems to have been composed that is, put together out of more ancient material in Judah in the ninth century
Jahvist
' '
'
in Israel in the eighth.
contents.
Each was an
similar in general almost undifferentiated tribal Logos,

all
They were very
a sort of history of the world and
the things in
it
that
were worth writing down.
A copy would be,
of
or
before the
Deuteronomists altered
it
for Semitic historians, the
most valuable book
in
iv
J,
E,
,...
AND P
is
-J3IW5W**Sft~.
103
the world.
The strange thing

-
that the reformers were able
It was necessary for them to carry their project through. not only to alter their own versions at Jerusalem, but to
suppress all old copies that differed from their own. Had the kingdom of Israel still been standing the task would
scarcely have been possible. There must have been, one would imagine, copies of the old books unexpurgated in the sanctuaries 1 of the Northern Kingdom. But Israel was now in
captivity,
and most
of the extant copies of his old half-pagan
books had doubtless gone with him. There was little danger of their idolatrous voices being heard from Halah and Habor
and the
river of
Gozan and the

difficulties in
cities of
the Medes.
even so there were
Judah
itself.
Yet There seems
to have been a regular military expedition against the remnants of Paganism, a formal destruction of the old High
Places,
and a massacre
of the priests at Bethel.
At
last
Jerusalem stood alone as the only sanctuary, and the reformers One is reminded of |iad undisturbed control of the Book.
Greek
stories about the interpolation of Homer, how Solon or Pisistratus or another bolstered his city's claim to the
island of Salamis
by interpolating a spurious line in the Iliad. of the story, and the ancients who believed it, thought it quite natural that there should be no other copies of the Iliad generally current by which the
Evidently the
teller
forger could be refuted.
we have found in the Pentateuch a document from three sources, the earliest written in the ninth compiled century, the latest about the year 621. But that is to leave
So
far, then,
out of account, at any rate as regards Genesis, the greatest, or at least the most formative and omnipresent, of all the
sources. The whole book was revised again, increased by large stretches of narrative, and, roughly speaking, brought into its present shape after the return from exile, between
the years 440 and 400 B. c. This reviser, as P, was a member of the priestly caste.
1
'
known
to critics
He
wrote,
among
But was there any connexion in Ancient Israel between the priestly caste and literature ? The later Sopher was the literate man.' D.S.M.
104
iv
other tilings, nearly the whole of Leviticus. That is to say, in an average chapter of Genesis \ve may read a verse written in the ninth century followed by one written in the fifth,
a gap of four hundred years. occur in the middle of a verse.
And sometimes
the gap will Sometimes other sources, of
unknown
1 date, will intervene.
Of course, even apart from the wholesale excision of paganism from the most ancient books, the peculiar qualities of these versions must have been much clearer when the books
existed as separate wholes. ments and those fragments have
:
We know
all
them only
in frag-
passed under the hands both of revisers and of religious reformers, who must both consciously and unconsciously have modified the more striking
discrepancies of style or statement between their various I sources. Still, the differences are even now pretty clear
:
take a few points from Canon Driver's Introduction to Genesis?

J, or the
Jahvist document,
is
a Logos of the most broadly
human
wear
interest.
It is full of poetry
and drama.
It delights
in explaining the origin of

clothes,
why
snakes
human institutions why men crawi, why child-birth is painful

life,
r
who invented
:
agriculture, pastoral
:
the drinking of wine

r
how men came
music, metallurgy, to have different
languages why Moabites, Ammonites, Canaanites, Edomites, are w hat they are, the cause being generally some significant
first action,
or
some
oracle spoken
by a
patriarch.
The
writer
is full
of interest in the sacred sites of Palestine,
each one of them
the altars, pillars, trees, and high places, and the reasons why is sacred. He has no idea of condemning
of them.
any
'
They had not yet come

at
into competition with
the Temple
Jerusalem.
He
calls
God by
the
name
In
Yahweh
'
from the beginning, and supposes that the true
religion naturally belonged to the primaeval patriarchs.

this, of course,
In
1
the other prophetic book, E, differs from him. the ancestors of Israel beyond the river were idolaters
' '
e. g.
Gen.
ii.
is
partly
an unknown source.
2
J and partly P. So is xiii. (Abraham, Lot, and Amraphel.)
11,
while xiv
is
from
DitlVrem-es of J, E, P.
iv
DIFFERENCES OF
2, 14, 15),
iii.
J,
E,
AND P
is
105
(Joshua xxiv.
to
and the name Yahweh

Again the
not revealed
J is frankly and naively anthropomorphic. He not only feels human he moulds man out emotions, but he performs sensible acts of earth, he plants a tree, he shuts up Noah in the ark, he smells burnt meat, wrestles with Jacob, and takes off the wheels
till
man
Exod.
14.
Yahweh
;
of
of the
Egyptian chariots. let us contrast with
this the
work
of the latest writer
(Now
i
takes no interest in the origin of human instituno interest in sacred sites, only in the tions, only in ritual
of
all.
:
Temple at Jerusalem
his
God
is,
practically speaking, never
anthropomorphic. His history of the world has been mapped out in a scheme of genealogies and dates, and especially of covenants between Yahweh and his chosen people, Israel.
There are three stages of history marked by a gradually

diminishing length of human life, and by the revelation of God under three distinct names Elohim, El Shaddai the obscure name revealed to Abraham in Gen. xvii and finally
:
Yahweh.
'
The Patriarchs
raise
no
altars,
perform no
till
sacrifices.
No
act of worship seems to be thought of
the appro-
priate place has been constructed
and the
vii.'
right persons
appointed for
is
The its performance. that of Aaron and his sons in Lev.

are strictly limited to Israel
first sacrifice
recorded
God
itself,
The promises of and the abiding

dependent on the
presence of
Yahweh with
his people is
directions for the exact construction of the tabernacle (Exod.

xxix).
It is all sacerdotal through and through. That is to say, there is a period of four hundred years between the earliest and latest of the large integral documents constituting the Book of Genesis. But the period of growth was much longer than that. In the case of Genesis the argument does not come out quite 30 clearly we can
;
take our illustration more easily from the Books of Samuel. As the earliest source iri Samuel we have the so-called Court
'
narrative
'
of David, attributed to the tenth century B. c.
At the other end there are considerable slices of narrative which are found in the ordinary Hebrew text, but not in
106
TV
the Septuagint translation, which was made about the year 200 B.C. Of this fact two explanations are possible. Either,
and
this
seems the simpler hypothesis, the narratives in
question were not in the Hebrew text from which the Septuaor else they were in the Hebrew text, gint was translated
;
and were deliberately

hypothesis
left
it is
left
clear that the authorized text
out by the translators. On either was not definitely
established.
I
A
of
traditional
book
of
which large parts can be
in the stage of growth. Samuel, then, was in process of growth for considerably more than seven hundred years. And that is without reckoning the small corruptions or verbal changes
is still
out or put in at discretion
The Book
which seem to have occurred much
later.
In some books,
for instance, there are changes directed against the claims of Christianity.
composed,
when J or E was first But, returning to the Pentateuch it was not composed out of nothing. Each of
:
them was really put together in the same way as the whole composite Pentateuch of the Priest, by taking an older existing book, copying it out, adding, omitting, and sometimes altering.
Many
of these earlier sources are
quoted by name, as the
Iliad quotes the older Argonautica. There is the Jasher. From it come the standing still of the
Book of Sun and
Moon (Joshua
(2
David's lament over Saul and Jonathan and perhaps some verses spoken by Solomon when the Ark was brought to the Temple (1 Kings viii. 12). The song in Num. xxi. 14, again, is it not written in the
x. 12),
Sam.
i.
17),
Book
of the
Wars
book
of the
Lord
'
In these cases the name
Much more often it is Sometimes a quotation betrays silently. itself by being in verse, like the Sword-Song of Lamech, and the oracles spoken over their respective children by Noah, But an insertion from a prose w ork would Isaac, and Jacob. be hard to detect and even the verse was apt to be worked back into prose (see commentators on 1 Kings viii. 12). Among other sources would be the mere tribal traditions, such as we have in the Book of Judges. Sometimes they
of the older
is
explicitly given.
omitted and copied
iv
SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH
107
are full and clear, and seem to depend on written documents. Sometimes a tradition consists merely of a name and a burialAfter him Elon the Zebulonite judged Israel and place. he judged Israel ten years. And Elon the Zebulonite died and was buried in Aijalon in the land of Zebulon.' Aijalon is probably the same word as Elon. The chronology will not work. And the story seems merely to mean that there was at Elon or Aijalon an unknown grave which was regarded
'
:
with reverence.
There was more detailed tradition at the various ancient

sanctuaries, Hebron, Bethel, Gilgal, and the like, a source particularly prominent in J and E, but discountenanced by
There were fragments of history or learning adopted by hearsay or otherwise from more advanced
the priestly editors.
nations.
This
is
a regular process in primitive races, and
is
admirably illustrated in Professor Margoliouth's short Life of
That prophet was constantly picking up scraps of Christian and Jewish lore, and incorporating them, with inevitable mistakes, in his Koran. In the Hebrew scriptures there seems to be an especially large debt to TBabylon, such as the stories of the Creation and the Flood certain fragments about Abraham, who perhaps had the honour of and meeting the great law-giver Hammurabi or Amraphel
; ;
Mohammed*
many
elements in the Hebrew laws themselves.

I realize that all this description
Now
must remain rather
ineffective
when unaccompanied by
detailed illustrations.
But the detailed illustrations would clearly take us quite beyond the limits of our present subject. And it is, of course, not any part of my business to prove the truth of the analysis of the Pentateuch. I merely take the results reached by a consensus of the best Semitic scholars, in order to show the sort of process which was normal in the formation of an ancient Traditional Book, and the qualities which naturally resulted therefrom. To produce such a composite work as
one of these books in
1
its later
stages without inconsistencies
Especially pp. 106 f. He got Goliath's name as Galut ; the name of Saul, David's other enemy, he had forgotten, so he made him Talut.
108
iv
and awkward joints would be difficult, as we said above, even for a modern editor with all his mechanical accesTo the ancient sories and his opportunities of revision.
i
editor the difficulties were insuperable.

fact, all
And, as a matter
of
ancient compilations betray themselves. I will not dwell on the various doublets and inconsistencies which careful reading discovers in
the Pentateuch
the two divergent
accounts of the Creation, and of the Flood, with traces of a third in which there was no Flood the inaccuracies of
;
the chronology so laboriously inserted by the Priestly writer ancient numbers, when at all complicated, seldom come out
much less on the many small confusions, like quite right that of the two wives of Esau who are mentioned three times,
;
each time with different names nor yet on such curious formal points as the case of the Twelve Tribes of Israel,
;
which are mentioned again and again as twelve, yet always add up as thirteen. Such weaknesses as these are normal
s
things among primitive historians. If they serve to illustrate the water's lack of critical control over his complex material,
they also are often evidence of his good

'
faith. 1
1 The Jahvist, very simple and anthropomorphic, narrated how, when the world was a tohu-bohu, Yahweh moulded a clay man and breathed life into him, and planted a garden and put the man to keep it. Then as
'
the
man was
lonely,
Yahweh made
all sorts of
beasts as companions for
him, but none was quite satisfactory till he made a woman out of one of the man's ribs, and then the man was content. The Priestly Document,
scientific, gives the other story of the six days of gradual process of development, as it were, from the lowest forms of life up to the highest, culminating eventually in man. We cannot be sure about the account of the Israelitish Elohist ; for the
more advanced and
creation, with a
Reviser, while combining the other two, omitted it altogether. Similarly in the Flood, the Jahvist tells how Noah took seven of each clean animal
and two of each unclean ; how the flood lasted some ninety-four days and how Noah came out at the end of the time and offered sacrifice. The Priest tells how Noah took two of every animal, with no distinction of clean or unclean that distinction, he apparently argues, cannot have been known to Noah, because it was first revealed to Moses in Lev. xi and Deut. xiv. He tells how the flood lasted a year and ten days, and how at the end God made a covenant with Noah and set his bow in the heavens for a sign thereof. There seems also to be a trace of a version in which the first Man was not called Adam, but Enosh the other Hebrew word for man. As to the chronology so carefully introduced by the Priestly
;
;
iv
I
DISTURBING INFLUENCES
;
109
hope that by now I have succeeded in illustrating two first, the impoints about these ancient authorless books which they remain fluid and mense periods of time during
and second, the difficulties which they have in growing combining their multiplex sources. The object which I have And I wish now to notice in view is, of course, Homer.
;
briefly
some two
or three
more
of the
phenomena
charactertheir
istic of this
kind of writing, in order that we
may know
faces again
when they meet us
in the Iliad.
First, there are the various disturbing influences that are
apt to affect the primitive historian. I will not lay stress on mythology, such as we find in the story of Samson, the
nor Sun-man, 1 or in the Babylonish part of the Creation on what I may call Romance, or the story-teller's instinct, such as we find in the narratives of David and of Joseph. These factors are enormously powerful in Greek legend ; Semitic scholars differ as to their influence in Hebrew. I will not lay stress on the tribal spirit, with its ramifications of patriotic devotion, party feeling, and odium iheologicum,
:
forces at times responsible for the widest misreadings and must remember that as a rule misrenderings of history.
We
an ancient writer only recorded what he wished to have that his book was only read within his own remembered
:
marries, has three children, and writer, Canon Driver shows that Judah after -the third of them has grown up, becomes a father again, and through the child thus born becomes a grandfather, all in the space of 22 years'. (Thirty-five would seem to be about the minimum possible.) The age of Ishmael at the time of his casting out varies between babyhood and adolescence. So does Benjamin's. The wives of Esau are given in Gen. xxvi as Judith, daughter of Beeri, and Bashemath d. Elon but in Gen. xxxvi they are Adah d. Elon and Bashemath d. Ishmael. And in chapter xxviii the daughter of Ishmael is Mahalath. One can see what sort of process this implies. The compiler of the two, or the three, narraHe had tives, did not keep constantly looking forward and backward. no index to show him all the places where he had mentioned Esau's wives, and help him to reduce them to order. In the case of the more important matters his memory no doubt served him, and he arranged his story conBut in smaller things, which were not of real gravity to him, sistently.
:
he copied his authorities faithfully without noticing the occasional contradictions.
from
$BP
'
Sun
'.
110

and that
iv
tribe or circle,
his only business with his tribe's
enemies was to injure them.

I
He
used his book as he would
consider, as one significant point, the of language which generally dogs these early helplessness writers as soon as they have anything complicated to express.
use his sword.
But
The
writer of Gen. x. 15, for instance, wishing to express the
relation of the Canaanites of the interior to the Phoenician

city of Sidon,
first-born.'
can only say
'
:
And Canaan
begat Zidon his
The
relation of the Canaanites to the Hittites,
a great foreign nation which seems to have had some settlers

in Canaan,
/
the same
city,
was certainly different. But it Canaan begat Heth.' The way

'
:
is
expressed in tribe, the alien
the foreign nation, are
all
treated as individuals, and
their complicated relations reduced to that of father
and
son. 1
Similarly Bethuel is mentioned as a person, the father of Rebekah, but his brothers Huz and Buz are tribes. Machir
1.
in Gen.
23
is
a person
' '
in
'
Num.
xxxii. 40
is
he
a
is
a clan
in
Num.
xxvi. 29 he
'
district again
perhaps rather a special case, since Jephthah had no legitimate father.

begets
begets the judge Jephthah
Gilead, which
district.
That
The disturbing
influences hitherto considered are
all,
in the
main, unconscious.
conscious influences.
Let us consider for a few moments two
Then we can make an end of these and return to Greece. In the first place, Semitic analogies is there in such a book as Genesis, for example, any conscious archaism ? The answer is clear. The latest of all the writers of the Pentateuch, P, is the one who is most particular to give an archaic and primaeval colour to his narrative. He has used his historical imagination, and constructed a remarkable picture of the age of the patriarchs, quite unlike his own age or even that of his immediate authorities. According
to him, the Patriarchs
*
knew not
the
name
of
Yahweh, knew
1 The statement in x. 6, Ham begat Canaan,' is different. It is definitely It suited the Israelites' selfuntrue, and comes from tribal animosity. respect to think as ill as possible of their not very distant kinsmen, the
Canaanites.
to
Consequently these undoubtedly Semitic tribes are assigned
Ham,
the accursed.
iv
ARCHAISM AND EXPURGATION

altars,
111
no
no
sacrifices,
no difference between clean and un-
clean meats.
All these things were specially revealed to
and definitely mentioned periods. The earlier J and E, are much less particular. Their writing writers, was centuries older, but the picture which they draw is actually more modern. They allow Abram to come to Bethel ',
them
at later
'
or pursue his enemies to the reflection that those
'
Dan
',
without being troubled by
sentatives of
Luz
'
'
and
'
names were only the later repreLaish '. The Jahvist tells us that
',
in Seth's time
men began to call upon the name of Yahweh
without thinking it necessary to revise his earlier narrative in which both the name and the person of Yahweh seem to be known to all. Probably, if we only knew it, they also
archaized after their fashion, but, to the archaizing of the Priest.
if
they did,
It so
was nothing happens that the

it
were not interested in such things as the comparative antiquity of bronze and iron or the date of the Dorian migration. But, if they had been, you may be sure that they would never have allowed a mention of iron nor a hint of the existence of Dorians to defile their
priestly writers
Hebrew
pages.
The
These things are of importance for Homer. practice of archaism is closely related to something
and more wide-reaching, the practice of expurgaIn the case of these ancient and traditional books, tion. which carry on the Logos of one age to grow into the Logos of the next, there must always emerge points of belief or feeling or conduct where the new age differs from the old. In advanced states of society, where the books exist in large numbers and the text cannot be tampered with, the usual
far deeper
resort
is
allegory.
as
meaning
All that is objectionable is interpreted something else. But while the books are still
growing, two courses are open to each new set of revisers. The simplest is tacitly to; alter the document, and cut out
from the venerable book

is
all
that seems unworthy of
it.
This
expurgation.
The
other,
more complex and more depen-
dent on an advanced historical sense, is to recognize the difference in manners, and to try even in the new writings to
112
TV
maintain the colour of the older age. That is archaism. One may say that on the whole archaism is the normal
practice, in style, in vocabulary,
and
is
in the selection of facts
brought face to face with something which he honestly hates or disapproves, then his archaism breaks down and he resorts to expurgation.
to relate.
But when the writer
Now
the whole of the Pentateuch
is
permeated by a con-
scious didactic purpose, and therefore by the spirit of expurgaFor one of the processes which have formed the tion.
the gradual conversion of the books of primitive Semitic pagans into the great book of Jewish monotheism. At what date the early sources ceased to be pagan is open
Pentateuch
is
to doubt
certain
;
but that they were once pagan is practically and probably the work of the Deuteronomists and
;
the Priests consisted almost as largely in their unseen exmatter as in the composition of their great codes, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, and the innumerable
cisions of objectionable
small additions
by which we now
trace them.
Of course, as
a rule, we have no means of knowing what expurgations or omissions have been made. The thing is cut out, and there
is
an end of
it.
But sometimes the
excision has not been
complete, or has in some

instances.
way
left traces.
Let us take some
There
*
is
Shame'
or
the curious set of cases in which the word Boshetk, Shameful Thing', has taken the place, or dis*
some genuine but objectionable word. the title Melekh, King, was applied to Yahweh For instance, and at one time in the seventh century as to other deities
torted the form, of
:
human
sacrifices were offered to him under that name. This was an abomination to the purer Jewish feeling. Wherever the word Melekh occurred in descriptions of these rites, the practice in the Synagogue was to avoid pronouncing it and
say instead Bosheth. To indicate this, though the consonants were not altered in the text, the vowels of Bosheth of were written under them. Hence arose an imaginary word
MLKH
afterwards corrupted to 'Moloch which was then "taken for the name of some unknown god of the Gentiles.
^ Molekh'
'
iv
'
BOSHETH
'
'
EXPURGATIONS
'
:
113
Lord,
Again,
or Master, to
the word
Ba'al
this
word,
meaning
was
originally a perfectly innocent title, applied
Yahweh as well as to the gods of Canaan. Consequently many Hebrew names in early times were formed from Ba'al.
But
Lord
nearly
to a later age they all been altered.
')
sounded idolatrous, and they have

Saul's son Ishba'al
'
('
Man
of the
is
turned into Ishbosheth,
man
of shame.'
Jona-
In the case of than's son Meriba'al becomes Mephibosheth. Jerubba'al or Gideon a different line was taken. The name
Ba'al founds or strengthens but it is carefully interpreted as a sort of calembour or play on ' the sound of the words, so as to mean Let Ba'al plead '.
really
;
must
have meant
'
'
This explanation then gives rise to one of the usual stories Gideon defies Ba'al, of the confounding of the false God. and Ba'al cannot plead, but remains dumb x (Gen. iv. 5).
^To take a different kind of expurgation, there seems to be No reason is in the story of Cain's sacrifice. the point of the story lay for its rejection. Probably /given
some omission
in the ritual
which Cain followed.
There must have been-
many authorities believe some description of the two rituals. Cain performed his sacrifice in some way that was considered unholy or savouring of the gentiles. The older story mentioned Cain's ritual in order to condemn it, the later editors declined to speak of it at all. There is
so at least
almost certainly a great omission just before the story of the Flood, in the passage (Gen. vi. 1 ff.) which tells how the
'
sons of
the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all that they chose '. The next
God saw
Exactly the same process has given rise to the mysterious Abomination of Desolation set up by Antiochus Epiphanes, in the well-known passages of Daniel (ix. 27, xiL 11). The word for abomination, Heb. f^p$, is used
1
'
'
exactly like
nQ
:
to supply the place of the unmentionable

'
name
Ba'al.
;
What Antiochus
up was Ba'al Shamdim, the Lord of Heaven an altar, that is, to Zeus Ouranios. In place of Baal we say Shiqqu?, and in place of Shamdim, heaven, which is here equally abomination unclean, inasmuch as it is part of the name of a heathen god, we put the almost identical word Shomem, from a word meaning to destroy or lay Ba'al Shamdim becomes shiqquf Shomem the Lord of Heaven waste.
really
set
'
becomes the
RAY
'
'
pollution
of
desolation
I
'.
114

unintelligible,
iv
two verses are confused and

is
and the subject
promptly changed. These instances, few as they are, will perhaps suffice to establish the mere fact that expurgations have occurred.
They may
also incidentally show how vitally the study of the expurgations in an ancient book helps towards the understanding of its whole spirit. The expurgations and the interall that a man rejects from his traditional teaching polations and all that he puts in its place a knowledge of those two
; ;
together will surely
contain the main secrets of
all
that
is is
most
alive in the
man's own character.
And
the same
true of an age. The interpolations and expurgations, if we followed the subject up, would teach us much about the 1 age of the Deuteronomists and the later age of the Priests.
have not attempted to analyse the expurgations of the Deuteronomists, what sort of thing they most objected to. The above cases are nearly all expurgations of idolatry or paganism, and that is evidently and by far the greatest preoccupation of the revisers. There are also some expurgations of immorality. As regards cruelty, they were much less particular than Homer, provided that the cruelty was directed against suitable objects. They approve of the ferocity of Samuel (1 Sam. xv)
1
1
or to find out
and the Herem generally i. e. the extermination of all living things, beast and human alike, in heathen countries. (See BAN in Enc. BibL, and compare the Scandinavian custom of dedicating hostile armies to Othin by
:
throwing a spear over them.) They allow even such a sympathetic hero ' * as Gideon to thresh the elders of Succoth with thorns of the wilderness ',
'
without comment ; the same may be said of David and others. In this particular one may note that the very late book, Chronicles, expurgates its sources e. g. 2 Sam. viii. 2 And he smote Moab (and measured them with the line, making them to lie down on the ground and he measured
*
:
two lines to put to death, and one full line to keep alive). And the Moabites became servants to David and brought gifts.' This is repeated in 1 Chron.
except that the Chronicler omits the words in brackets. Similarly the account of the taking of Kabbah, where David brought forth the people that were therein and put them under saws and under
xviii. 2,
*
iron, and he made them pass through omitted altogether in Chronicles. (Driver and others, however, think that torture is not intended here, but only On the other hand, when religious motives come in, the latest slavery.) writers can be very savage. See 1 Kings xiii. 2 and 2 Kings xxiii. 20, where Josiah's wholesale sacrifice of the priests of Baal is described with exultation. (The end of chap, xxiii is ascribed to a very late source, but the tone is really much the same in the rest of the chapter, which is by J.)
harrows of iron and under axes of

the brickkiln
'
(2
Sam.
xii. 31), is
Not perhaps
actual expurgation, but something very similar, seems to
iv
PRINCIPLES OF EXPURGATION
I
115
And
wish
now
aspects, to
Homer.
to apply this method, at least in one of its I shall not attempt to face the question
But the It is too complicated a subject. traces of expurgation in Homer have been very little studied, and seem capable of yielding some interesting results. will consider them in the next lecture.
of interpolation.
of our extant
We
have been at work in those cases where we find that certain very old parts composite narrative were not included in the Deuteronomic For instance, in the Book of Judges, D is not responsible for revision. a story possessing historical interest but no religious chap, ix (Abimelech He ended Samson at xv. 20, after the jaw-bone value), nor for xvi-xxi. victory, at the words: 'And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.' The part omitted consisted of Dalilah and the end of Samson the stories of Micah, the Danites, the sin of the Benjamites, &c. all somewhat unedifying. Similarly in Samuel, D has no hand in 1 Sam. xxviii. 3 to end (Witch of Endor), which breaks the continuity of his narrative nor in 2 Sam. ix-xx, which contains all the intimate Court stories, BathD ended his narrative of David with the sheba, Kabbah, Tamar, &c. risumb in 2 Sam. viii. 15 ff., And David reigned over all Israel, &c.' These stories are not later inventions. They come from the oldest material, and must have lain before D, who deliberately rejected them. They were, however, preserved and added in to the composite narrative which we now possess in an age which was more open than that of D to historical, antiquarian, or
:
'
merely
human
interests.

I.
THE EXPURGATIONS: THE HOMERIC

SPIRIT
IN considering the subject of Homeric expurgations I will my instances chiefly from the Iliad, because I believe the Iliad to be, in the ancient phrase, more Homeric than the Odyssey, that is, both to have more of the definite Homeric
take
' '
and to have undergone a more thorough process of revision and expurgation. First, then, for the only part of the subject which is difficult The to discuss. It is too important to omit altogether.
spirit,
evidence
is
clear that there existed in early times,
among
both Aryans and Semites, and notably among the Dorians who are generally reckoned among the Northern invaders of Greece, certain forms of sexual irregularity which were in the
end
totally
condemned by the Jewish and the Athenian
law,
but were tolerated in various parts of the Aegean and even Sodom and in such well-conducted communities as Crete.
Gomorrah, according to the tradition, were consumed by fire from heaven. The tribe of Benjamin was almost blotted out. Laius, king of Thebes, was involved in a fearful curse, together with his whole race. But early Greek traditions testify both to the existence and the toleration of these practices. Now Homer has swept this whole business, root and branch, out of his conception of life. 1 Exactly the same spirit is seen at
work when we compare the rude ithyphallic Hermae of ancient Greek cults with the idealized messenger of the Gods in the
E 266 and Y 231 on Ganyinedes show that Homer's silence is intentional. Compare the Schol. on n 97-100, and perhaps the word irtp in n 130.
1
Cf. also
Aesch. Myrmidons,
fr.
135 (Nauck).
v
Odyssey.
EXPURGATIONS OF IMPURITY
But that
is
:
117
for this kind of merely one instance the whole of our Homer. expurgation really pervades Closely akin to this is the spirit in which our present text
marriage of Alcinoiis and Arete, and queen of the Phaeacians. the king Her name was Arete, and she was born of the self-same parents that begat
of the Odyssey treats the
'
king Alcinoiis
tell us,
'
(TJ
54
ff.).
Exactly
Hesiod
too, the scholia
'
made
abundant instances
the royal pair brother and sister. There are of that sort of marriage in the houses of
human
the ancient divine kings. The royal blood was too superto make it desirable for the king to wed any one
.^
lower than his

of Zeus.
own sister Hera herself was sister and spouse The Pharaohs and the Ptolemies after them made a practice of having their sisters for queens. Such a queen was doubly august. Arete, we are told, was honoured as
'
honoured in these days, of all wiio hold rule.' She was hailed like a god when she went abroad' (77 66 ff.). This is the genuine language of the Saga, and we know how to understand it!
is
no mortal
woman
their houses
under a husband's
But
in classical Greece there

c
such a union was

in the Odyssey
4
'
unholy
',
arisen a spirit to which incestum. And as we read on
had
which in somewhat confused language explains that when the Saga said ancestors ', and when it parents (TOKYJCOV) it only meant
*
we
find a genealogy inserted,
said
that Alcinous'
brother,
'
(anovpov) it only
meant
Rhexenor, died without male child

'
'
childless
'
really the daughter of the said brother. 1 riage between uncle and niece.
It
Arete was was only a mar!
Next, there has been a very careful expurgation of divers

cruel or barbarous practices, especially, I think, of those which seemed characteristic of inferior races. The Iliad is
full of battles,
Yet the
spirit of
and of battles fought with extraordinary fire. them is not savage. It is chivalrous. No
enemy
1
is
ever tortured.
No
prisoners
with one exception

'
In
my
Ancient Greek Literature I said by mistake
first
cousins
' :
see
Burrows,
Crete, p. 217.
118

are ever maltreated.
to be noticed later
special cases
Let us take two
where signs
of expurgation are visible.
that the dead body of Hector was dragged by That seems bad enough. Achilles round the walls of Troy.
We know
and the repentance of Achilles is It seemed so to the poet the main theme of the last two books of the Iliad. But
:
a far worse story was really handed down by the tradition. There are fragments of the rude unexpurgated saga still
extant, according to which Hector was still alive when his enemy tied him to the chariot rail and proceeded to drag
him
to death.
Sophocles, always archaic in such matters,
So does Euripides explicitly follows this legend (Ajax, 1031). (Androm. 399). Even so late a writer as Vergil seems to
adopt
it.
1
In
fact, it
may
be said on the whole to dominate
will have none of it (X 361-95). are told so not only in explicit language, but with rather peculiar repetition before Achilles began the
the tradition.
But Homer
Hector was dead

'
we
êtKea epya,
the shameful deeds.'
'
And a
dust cloud rose
about him as he was dragged, and the long dark hair spread wide, and all the head lay in the dust, which before was but now Zeus gave him up to them that hated beautiful
;
him, to be foully wronged in his
own
fatherland.'
Again, there is, as we have said, no torture in the Iliad. But there is a passage where a particularly dreadful wound is described with, possibly, a certain gusto. The writhing
compared to a bull struggling in a net, and his pain So far some older poet. But immediately is dwelt upon. a saving line is added a line of the sort that is technically called inorganic ', that is, which can be added or left out with no effect upon the grammar or continuity. It runs
is
'
:
man
'
So he struggled
ov TL /jtaAa
quite a
little
while, not at all long
'
(fj,ivvv0d
Trtp,
brfv,
573).
Now
is
in the Odyssey, which, as
is
up than the Iliad, there where the treacherous handmaids and the goatherd are to be killed. It has been decreed
said, is less rigorously cleaned
have
one scene of torture.
It
1 Aeneid ii. 273 'perque pedes traiectus lora tumentis.' probably copying the Iliu Persis in this passage.
Vergil
was
TORTURE
hung up
in a
INSULT TO THE DEAD

'
119
They row with nooses round their necks, so that they should die in grievous pain.' So far, I think, the older There follows instantly the same saving verse Their poet.
are then
*
that the handmaids shall not
die
by a clean death'.
'
feet struggled for quite a little while, not at all long
'
!
The
torture of
women was
(X 473). even to an audience unpleasant
which approved the cruelty to the goatherd.
Take another case, equally clear. The ordinary practice of Homeric war allowed a warrior to take his dead enemy's armour. This has, I suppose, been the case in all ages. But there was a way of stripping the slain w hich added a sting The victor tore the dead man's of outrage to the spoiling. This practice has been for the tunic and left him naked. most part expurgated out of the poems. Heroes are allowed But to speak of it as a possibility, or even to threaten it. 1 are not allowed actually to practice it. There are two they In N 439 Idomeneus has pierced a man instructive passages. the breast, and then rends his tunic about him '. through That is not pleasant so the line is added, even the tunic of bronze, which aforetime protected his body from death '. The tunic becomes a tunic of bronze. It was only the man's In another passage rent breastplate that Idomeneus
r '
'
:
'
'
(A 100) the attempt to avoid this barbarity has led to a curious confusion. Agamemnon has slain some men and
taken their armour

their tunics
then he leaves them

stripped
with their breasts

or 'torn
later
gleaming, when he had

'.
off their tunics',
So
it
must
originally have run.
But the
'
poet would not allow such conduct. He has greatly embarrassed his commentators by taking out the word tore or stripped off ', and actually substituting the word drew on '. Agamemnon now leaves the men with their breasts gleaming when he has reverently drawn their tunics over them. 2 The audience may be puzzled for a second. But
' '
'
545, 559,
*
B 416, n 841, just as they speak and often.

arrjOetn
all
of alicia to the
dead as a
100.
possibility,
TraâtVoi/ray,
tird
irepiftvaf
XITWVOLS,
So Aristarchus
and
MSS.
Some
people, however, tried
to avoid the difficulty
by
120

If
v
their
that will pass.
you told them that Agamemnon,
great king, did on the battle-field one of those revolting things that barbarians delight in and all decent Greeks utterly abjure, the awkwardness would not pass so easily.
Again, there is the matter of poisoned arrows. no doubt whatever that the primitive inhabitants
There
is
of Greece
poisoned their arrow-heads.

KoV,
The very word
for poison, TOItell of
means
belonging to
an arrow'.
*
And many myths
the incurable and burning pains caused by arrows. The arrows of Heracles in Hesiod (Aspis, 132) had on the front of them
Think of the wound (cf. Scholia). Think of the poisoned arrows of Apollo, bringing pestilence. Think also of the peculiar word, so often applied to arrows and arrow wounds, a^vKroy, From which Does it not mean incurable much there is no escape.' more than unerring ? The same thought explains why Eros is generally armed with arrows, not with a great spear. He makes a wound which looks slight, which perhaps hardly shows but there is in it a burning poison from which the
death and trickling drops
of Philoctetes.
'
'
'
'
'
'
stricken
man
does not escape.
Now
off
;
in the Iliad this poison has been completely cleaned
from the arrow heads. Poison is treacherous, ungentlemanly a weapon for low barbarians, not for heroes. Yet you can see from a number of lines what the arrows originally were. Old phrases have been left unchanged when Pandaros shoots Diomedes in the shoulder he shouts in triumph that he cannot long support the strong arrow ', that is, that he cannot long survive (E 104). In A 139 the arrow only just
:
'
grazed Menelaus's skin but Agamemnon immediately thought he would die. 1 Archers in Homer chose out an arrow un;
'
shot before', whose poison has not been rubbed off (A 117, &c.). An arrow is habitually described by epithets which gain point
as soon as
we remember that arrows once were poisoned. They

made
iraiupaivovras
reading inti K\vra revx*' airrjvpa. Aristarchus himself agree with xnwvas, an obvious makeshift.
1
Of course, in the present course of the story,

slight.
Agamemnon
is
reassured
by finding the wound
v
are
'
POISONED ARROWS
bitter
'.
'
HUMAN
'
SACRIFICE
121
',
charged with groans
',
a foundation of black
anguish
The Odyssey,
more went
explicit.
as before, being less expurgated, is In a 261 we are told how Odysseus once
to Ephyra, to Ilos, son of
Mermeros
an ominous name
'
man- slaying drug to anoint his arrows withal. would not give it him. He feared the nemesis of But my father,' the speaker continues, the eternal gods. him some. For he loved him terribly.' The Odysseus gave of the earliest legends must of course have used poison. 2
to seek a
Ilos
But
'
to a more complicated subject. With one to be considered later, both Iliad and Odyssey are exception,
We
come next
completely expurgated of the abomination of
Human Sacrifice.
The Homeric spirit would have no dealings with such things. it had too little intensity of It had too much humanity
:
denounce human sacrifice as Jeremiah, for instance, denounced the rites of the Tophet outside It is not Homer's way to denounce a thing Jerusalem. 3 that he objects to. He merely sweeps it out of existence. The early Greek myths are full of human sacrifices. One /
superstition.
It did not
can think at once of Menoikeus, Athamas, Phrixus and Helle,

the children of Heracles, Macaria, Iphigenia, Polyxena, and the numerous virgin- martyrs of tragedy. If these stories
were mere
fiction, it
would be possible
though
'
still difficult
'
:
that they were the horrid inventions of later poets, trying to outbid their predecessors. But they are not fiction. Nearly all of
to hold that they were
unknown
to
Homer
them come straight from some ancient and disused religious rite, or some relic of very primitive tradition. Iphigenia, for is a form of an ancient anthropoctonous instance, goddess,
identified with Artemis. 4
mKpbs mean).
8
Polyxena
is
a queen of the Under-
oiffros,
0\ca
OTovotVTa, /uAcui/eW fpp obvvaow (whatever tpfm
may
used,
Laws of Manu, vii. 90. 'In war no poisoned weapons are to be and no insults are to be addressed to a fallen enemy.' I take this note from Mr. Romaine Paterson's eloquent book, The Nemesis of Nations. 3 Jer. vii. 31, xix. 5 fi% xxxii. 35 Ezek. xvi. 20 f., 36, xx. 26, 31, xxiii. Cf. Mic. vi. 6-8, &c., and laws in Deut. xii. 31, xviii. 10, &c. 37, 39.
Of.
;
Artemis-Iphigenia worshipped in Hermione, Paus. ii. 35. 1. Cf. Hesych. a- 17 "ApTfJns (Farnell, Cults of Greek States, vol. ii, chap, xiii, note 34).
122
'

'
world,
'
She of the Poly-xeina,' or Polydegmon '. Polydector

' '
many
Some
Guests,' the wife of

of these
bloody tradi-
and therefore later. 1 But others are pre-Hellenic. And even those due to Phoenician influence were early enough for those middle and later generations of the Homeric poets, which were mainly responsible In the case of Iphigenia, for the work of expurgation. 2 Now indeed, one can almost see the marks of the excision.
tions are doubtless Phoenician,
Homer has cut out
these stories for their revoltingness, just as
he cuts out the cannibalism of Lycaon and Pelops, or the mutilations of the Hesiodic gods. That is a sufficient reason,
and, as regards the Odyssey, it may be the only one that But if we look closer into the old stories of human operates.
sacrifice,
we shall see that the subject has ramifications, and that there were other causes contributing to this cleansing of the Homeric atmosphere. With most of them we shall symfirst.
pathize, with one possibly not.
To take the latter that have come down
The
stories of
human
all,
sacrifice
to us in
myth
are nearly
for
some
reason or other, sacrifices of virgins. One cannot be quite sure whether this is due to history or to romance. The
stories generally occur in the
climax of a tragedy or some
similar place,
of
where they are intended to produce an effect romantic horror. So that naturally young virgins are
chosen as the victims, rather than, let us say, middle-aged merchants. Yet, on the other hand, it is likely enough that
was more the practice to slay a young girl than a man. The girl was more likely to be she was of less value to the tribe she ceremonially perfect
when such deeds were done

:
it
On
the date of the
Myres in C. E. x. pp. 350 Review for April, 1905.
main period of Phoenician influence in Greece see ff., and my article Odysseus in the Quarterly
'
'
2 In Aeschylus (B 303-329; cf. Aesch. Ag. 115-20, and the Cypria). and the Cypria, when the bad omen occurs, Calchas declares that Artemis is wroth with Agamemnon and demands the sacrifice of Iphigenia. In B, when the 5ra n&upa invade the hecatombs and the Greeks are silent with horror, Calchas rises and declares merely that they will take One cannot but suspect that originally there was Troy in the tenth year
!
a price
demanded
for that victory.
v
would
HUMAN
SACRIFICE
VIRGINS
123
be, at the best, more ready to die willingly, and, at the worst, easier to kill. Now the Odyssey stands on a different footing but I suspect that these stories would have been rejected from the
;
Iliad,
not only because
human
sacrifice
also because the stories involved too intense
was a barbarity, but an interest in
women. The Achaioi

'
of
the Iliad are habitually described by a

'
rather curious phrase, *a/o7/ Ko/xoWres, not so much longhaired as letting the hair on the head grow long '. As to the meaning of this phrase we may follow a hint thrown out
'
long since
votaries. 1
word
certain
by Robertson Smith. It means that the men \vere They had made a vow VTTOO-Ô-^ is the Homeric to take Troy, and this implied a vow not to do Like the specified things until they had taken Troy.
modern language they were
warriors of the Old Testament, they were consecrated. 3 In taboo while on the war-path, and
the duty of never cutting, combing, or washing the hair was the visible sign of various other abstinences. The most im-
portant
/of
|
among
these
was abstinence from the
familiar society
I think that the Iliad is quite consistent throughout in the recognition of this taboo, a somewhat surprising
women.
fact.
For the Poems seldom care to be consistent about anything that does not occupy the front plane of a hearer's
The nearest approach to a breach of it is perhaps It seems odd that men under a vow of this sort should quarrel about women-captives. But it only seems odd because we think of the siege of Troy as a long period. The Greeks had some hopes of taking Troy that very day, and then the vow would be off '. Agamemattention.
the situation in A.
'
non's language
1
is strictly
correct (vv. 31, 113).
He
always
Religion of the Semites, p. 333, and Additional Note 1, Taboos incident to Pilgrimages and Vows. 2 B 286 ff. vir6ax* ffls of the Greeks. In B 349 it is Atos viroax*- In
T 84 Aeneas
\)Ttia\rro
(had
made a vow)
1
to fight Achilles.
The Franks
had similar practices. 3 Cf. 2 Sam. xi. 11 (Uriah),

Cf. also
Sam.
Pans.
i.
37. 3, viii. 41. 3 (hair
xxi. 4 f., and WAR in Enc. Bibl. kept for river worship).
124

'
v
'
associates his love of Chryseis with
home
'
and
returning
to Argos '. True, Achilles and Patroclus do not observe the taboo in I, but that is because they have definitely renounced
have renounced their part in the war (I 665 ff.). 1 Agamemnon seems to have observed it (I 133, 275). Nestor is too old to be bound by it, and is waited upon by a handit,
as they
maid, Hecamede (A 624).
I suspect that the peculiar
woman-
due originally to this ignoring atmosphere ancient taboo of warriors on the war-path and that later, when the actual religious ground had been forgotten, there
of the Iliad is
;
remained a womanless atmosphere and a feeling that any

female interest was out of place in a high story of war. That is why there is no Brunhild or Guinevere among the motive
forces of the Iliad
fellow soldier
of heroes.
is
only a Patroclus. Love for a friend and the only love austere enough for this strife
:
The exceptions
to this ignoring of
women
are to be found
among the women of Troy, chiefly Helen and Andromache. The Trojans were not under any such vow as the Achaeans.
They would have been only too glad for the war to stop any day. They were not growing their hair long. In a Trojan atmosphere women can be described and made interesting.
It is in a Trojan atmosphere, in the close neighbourhood of the great parting of Hector and Andromache, that we have the one mention in the Iliad of tragic or guilty love, the
it is
story of Anteia's passion for Bellerophon. And how sternly cut down to a bare resume of facts That whole subject,
!
which has formed the most fruitful spring of modern drama and romance, occupies in the whole Iliad six lines out of some fifteen thousand (Z 160-5). These Trojan princesses in the Iliad and many beautiful passages in the Odyssey show
!
how
would.
the Homeric poets could write about women if they But in the case of the Trojan women themselves
notice two points.
we may
I
their pictures are, there is
In the first place, splendid as no love interest about them. The

vow not
1 Cf. V 144, where Achilles renounces, for specific reasons, the to cut his hair.
SUPPRESSION OF
all
WOMEN
:
125
is steadily ignored. Secondly, the great occur in markedly late parts of the Iliad and, passages as we shall often have occasion to notice, the later parts of
whole of that subject
Homer show
or tragedy.
in
many ways
of
a growth of the spirit of drama
a poet who had begun to move that great conception, the position of the women in toward a besieged and doomed city must have been in itself a subject
To the mind
of such compelling interest that
he might well venture to the
very verge of his traditional field in order to treat of it. Andromache, the loving and noble wife of the great enemy,
is
a being
made
But outside these two

Trojan women
in the Iliad.
for tragedy. or perhaps,

is is
if
we add Hecuba,
;
three
there
a steady suppression of female interest
There
no
sacrifice of Iphigenia
no
sacrifice
of Polyxena. The Amazons, firmly seated as they are in early Epic legend, are only mentioned in late and so-called spurious passages (F 189, Z 186). The crimes of the great
wicked heroines, Clytemnestra, Epicaste, Eriphyle, Procne, Althaia, Skylla, and the like, are kept carefully away from
the Iliad, and allowed only a scanty mention in the Odyssey. 1 There is nothing about Creusa, Aeneas's wife, though she was
an important character in saga and received worship as a goddess. There is nothing about the prophetess Cassandra. The prophesying of Troy is done by a man, Helenus. Through
nearly
'
all
thetic spirit
the Iliad there reigns that austere and unsympawhich breathes in the words attributed to Pericles,
'
that a woman's fame is to be as seldom as possible mentioned by men, either for praise or blame (Thuc. ii. 45). It is a curiously different spirit from that of Aeschylus and
Euripides or Plato. It is quite different even from that of the Odyssey. It is a spirit so monstrously arrogant that we are apt to overlook a certain grandeur which it possesses.
When
put
1
history
it
one thinks of the part sometimes played by women in for instance, in French history one must feel, to
at the lowest, a certain perverted spiritual dignity in
of
The case
Clytemnestra in the Odyssey
is
peculiar,
and needs separate
treatment.
126
the fact remarked upon by Wilamowitz, that in the whole but political history of Athens there is only one woman,
she
pervades everything
the
mail-clad Virgin
of
the
Acropolis.
The
in
victims, then, in these stories of
human
sacrifice are
But they have another characteristic. virgins. without exception, persons of royal blood. That is to say, they all owe their original creation to that dark and wide-reaching tract of early religion which has lately
most cases
are
all,
They
been illuminated to us by the work of Dr. Frazer. At the back of them stands that to us almost incomprehensible being, which somehow commended itself to the mind of
primitive man, the divine king
his tribe,
lest
who
and who must be put
personifies the life of to death at fixed periods
that life should grow weak. He is generally called a vegetation spirit, since the welfare of the trees and crops is the first need of an agricultural tribe. But he affects not
only the fruits of the
soil,
but also the flocks and the
human
life,
beings. or the vital force, of the
So
it is
better to consider
him
as representing the
community.
As such he becomes
identical with the tribal god.
god is a beast or he may be, the king is one also. totem, as I will not spend more words in explaining this worship of is it not written in the Golden Bough, in the divine king
;
If the tribal
the History of
Early Kingship, and the lectures on Attis, Adonis, and Osiris ? In their origin the slaughtered king, the god-king, and the beast-king belong to the same region. They
the.
were largely identical beings.
In Greek mythology as we
know
divers
it,
these beings, like other barbarisms, have been in

;
ways transformed
but we can see their traces.
In Phthiotis, in Thebes, and in Athens we meet well-known

stories of the usual
the city is doomed to destruction type unless one of the royal blood shall die for the people. In Athens the last king, Codrus, sacrifices himself. In Thebes
:
his life-blood into the dragon's den.
the one remaining male of the royal line, Menoikeus, sheds In Phthiotis the stories
are
more confused.
Phrixus and Helle
fly
away, though
HUMAN
SACRIFICE
;
DIVINE KINGS
127
the king Athamas is condemned to but always escapes at the last moment. In some cases, die, He was allowed it would seem, the divine king was ejWojpos. to live for nine seasons ', and then was removed before the
Helle ultimately dies
*
sacred force had time to abate.

life
Nine seasons comprised the two vegetation-heroes, the sons of the Threshingfloor, Otus and Ephialtes, who tried to scale heaven and Nine seasons also, strangely enough, were slain (A. 311). formed the limit of each incarnation of the divine Minos,
of the
the perpetual king of Crete

1
(r
179).
Miss Harrison has

'
Minos Iw&pos @aai\vt Ai&s peydkov

:
6apiffT-f)s
(r
179),
ruled for nine
years, the speech-comrade of great Zeus.'
Minos was periodically murdered i. e. into the Bull-God's Cave every nine years and there sacrificed, another ' king coming out in his place. (' Zeus is merely the Greek way of naming
I.e.),
I cannot help suspecting that the Bull- King was regularly driven
the Cretan Bull-God.) The evidence is (1) He ruled for nine years (Odyssey therefore presumably he somehow ceased to rule at the end of that
:
(2) It is known that he went up into the Bull-God's Cave every nine period. * years, to converse with Zeus ', to receive new commandments (npoardynara
and give an account of his stewardship (Plato, Minos, 319 d, 630 d, 632 d Strabo, pp. 476, 482, 762, citing Ephorus and Plato). (3) This going into the Cave of the Bull-God cannot be distinguished from going into the Labyrinth to be slain by the Minotaur or Bull of Minos. And the bloody tribute of seven youths and seven maidens was, according to Plutarch, sent to the Minotaur every nine years (Plut. Theseus, xv). Did they conceivably die with the king ? Were they perhaps a later and
or
v6fj.ovs)
Laws, 624
b,
temporary stage of the business, a vicarious sacrifice instead of the king ? It is noteworthy that the said divine Bull was originally made angry (cfipy/Mc&fliyJ against Minos by the special wrath of Poseidon (Apollodorus, iii. 1. 1, 3), which looks as if it was originally Minos himself who was killed by it. (4) It bears out these suspicions that we have no tradition of Minos's death. That is, his death was a secret. He was supposed merely to go into the holy cave and come out again rejuvenated after his converse with God. There was, or is, an ordeal in Lower Nigeria, by which people go up a Sacred Road to the Cave of the Long Juju ', and, if condemned, never come out again, being, as far as we can judge, murdered by the Minos's mother, Europa, who, when a young girl, was carried priests. away by the Bull-God, was also the wife of Asterios ', which was the name of the Minotaur. I cannot find that she was nine years old when she Has the disappeared, but one would not be surprised if it was so. proverbial nine-year-old ox of Hesiod (Erga, 436) any bearing upon this subject ? I subjoin the other passages where the word Iwlupos occurs in
* '
'
Homer
ods
in K 19 the mystic
:
bag given by the King
of the
Winds
is
Iwtwpoio
ib.
vwpoiaw:
in
390, Kirke's enchanted victims are aid\otaw 351 Patroclus' wounds are filled dte'ufxiTos
128

1
shown how Minos was a bull-god as well as a king. At certain feasts, and notably at his royal marriage, he wore a bull's mask, and his queen perhaps a cow's mask. It was the same with that other perpetual king, Pharaoh. At the periodical feast of the royal marriage Pharaoh was disguised as Osiris and Pharaoh's wife as Isis, the deities whose inand the yAau/ccomSa There can be no doubt that these names reach back Kovpqv. 2 And we ultimately to a cow- goddess and an owl-goddess.
/ÔWTTI? TTOTVIO, *Hprj
carnation they were. need not dwell upon
will
not multiply instances.
We
shall see in a later lecture
how
real is the historical con-
nexion between such saga-figures as Agamemnon, Diomedes,
and these part-human, part-animal, part-divine But it is just this sort of barbaric bestial haziness that Homer will least of all things tolerate. For Homer there are no cow-goddesses nor yet cow-headed goddesses, no
Achilles,
tribal kings.
owl-goddesses nor yet owl-headed goddesses
only a goddess
in supremely beautiful form who takes a blameless interest in cows or is attended by a faithful owl.
And
in just the
same
clear the dividing line persons in the Iliad or Odyssey, as there are in the rest of Greek tradition, who appear now as one and now as the other.
Homer has drawn sharp and between men and gods. There are no
spirit
There
is
a definite avoidance of the makeshift bridge which
satisfied
Hesiod
' ;
the divine race of heroes,
who
are called
(See Leaf on M 23, and Schol. BL, ibid.) Kings demi-gods.' be descended from gods, and specially favoured by partimay
cular gods.
But that is all. The peasants of the Peloponnese continued long after Homer's time to worship at the altars of a being called Zeus- Agamemnon. 3 They may have been far
which
1
had some magic power, ws
<f>apfjiaKw5rj
rty Svm^tv IXOVTOS
says
Schol. A.
main text
*
Following, I find, Mr. A. B. Cook in Class. Rev., 1903, p. 410. is Diod. i. 62.
'
The
See also Cook on Animal Worship in the Mycenaean Age ', J.H.S., 1894. in deference to so high an authority I see that Dr. Farnell doubts this I cite my grounds for the statement at greater length Lycophron, 1 123 ff. (where Cassandra prophesies l/tds 5' d/coirrjs Zfvs So-a/marcus K\rj$rjafTai) r also 335, 1359 ff., and Scholia. Also Clem. Al. Protrept. pp. 11, 18, cites
*
;
:
. . .
.
ABOLITION OF DIVINE KINGS

Olympia.
1
129
from clear as to the distinction between the God Cronos and

his son Pelops at
But
in the Iliad Zeus, son of

;
Cronos,
is
quite definitely a king of gods
Agamemnon, son
is
of Pelops, definitely a king of
men.
There
no shade
of
confusion between them.
was a remarkable achievement of the Hellenic intellect, a man was not a god, and that it was no use calling him so. It needed such clearness of sight, such daring, such humanity. We can see how hard the step was when we reflect how small a part of the human race rose to the height of following it. Think of the divine honours paid ages after this to the Roman emperors. Think of the
It
this clear realization that
senate agreeing to Caligula's claim of such honours for himself and his horse. 2 No doubt there were mitigating circumstances in Caesar- worship. The divine horse was an admitted Sensible men were conscious that the worship eccentricity.
was in some sense metaphorical. Politicians found it useful for testing and impressing the loyalty of a distant oriental population. But the fundamental fact of the matter is that such deification of kings did not seem to educated Romans a thing unfamiliar or absurd. The old Roman kings themselves, as Dr. Frazer has shown, had been in their time The various kings whom they had personifications of gods.
conquered were
Parthia,
The
gods, the kings of Egypt, of Syria, of old Hellenic spirit was not then alive to testify.
all
The
half -Greek Alexander
and
his generals
had walked up
Usener Staphylus for the worship of 'Aya^^vovd rtva Ai'a \v 'S.ir&prri. has pointed out what looks like an early trace of the same worship in Aesch. Choeph. 255 /cat TOV Ovrrjpos xai ff TI/ZWVTOS fjtcya (cf. also ibid. 358, This may be a case r<av fj.(yiaTcuv irp6iro\6s r \0oviav l/ccf rvpdvvoov).
\
where two gods clash until one is made the priest or irp6iro\os or KkySovxos of the other. Agamemnon was King of Sparta (Stesich. 39, Simon. 20), and died at Amyclae (Find. P. xi. 32) where Pausanias saw his tomb. 1 See Mayer in Roscher's Lexicon, Kronos especially ii. 1507 ff. Observe that Pelops is Kronios, and that he also conquered Kronios. Paus.
of the
well-known
sort,
'
vi. 21. 11.

8 Caligula also Suet. Calig. 22.
was an oapiar^
of Jupiter Capitolinus, exactly like Minos.
MURRAY
130
and down in barbaric was still lying in the
places, where the old unpurified swamp sun, and had caught the contagion of
La nostalgic de la boue laid hold upon them. savage ideas. Alexander, who destroyed classical Greece, insisted that he was a god, and the son of a divine snake. Demetrius received
a semblance of divine honour even in Athens.
the atmosphere which
That
is
just
Homer and
the spirit of early Hellen-
ism had cleared away one might have hoped, for ever. Like other morbid growths of the primitive human mind,
these deifications of living kings have had some particular developments that were beneficent and even splendid. But the verdict of sane thought is against them. It is not only
that their history
is
written in blood.
It is that they are
in their very essence degrading to
abolition during the fe\v
humanity. And their centuries in which the Hellenic
power stood unbroken might of itself be taken as a fair measure of the importance of Greece to human progress.
So
far, then,
of successful expurgation.
ultimately,
\ve
we have taken are instances The reforming Homeric spirit has with what difficulties and against what opposition
the cases which
baffled.
where
Let us now consider a place Such passages were sure to occur in a traditional book. For the first business of all these ancient and at times it happened that poets was to record history facts were clearly and ineradicably fixed in the objectionable The panegyrist of David who compiled our Book of history. Samuel could not ignore David's treatment of Uriah. The
know
it
not, executed its will.
was
poet of Achilles cannot ignore the savagery of his hero's triumph. The origin of the Uriah story in the midst of a tradition so greatly modified for the glorification of David
is
many ways difficult to explain. 1 But in the case of Achilles, we may take it as certain that in some early form of the poem the ferocity of his revenge was part of his glory.
in
Hector did,
kill Achilles'
1
it is
true,
dearest friend.
end
of
by miserable treachery, contrive to But what a revenge our great

Lecture IV.
Though
it.
see note at
The Deuteronomists did
omit
v
Achilles took
!
EXPURGATION BAFFLED
:
131
He tied Hector by the heels to his chariot, all his friends looked on and and dragged him to death dared not interfere. Then he maltreated the body in all sorts of ingenious ways day by day, till there was nothing left of Much the Trojans could do to stop him! And as for it. Patroclus, a round dozen of Trojan nobles were slaughtered over his grave. That was how Achilles treated his enemies. That kept the dogs in their place. Now what was to be done with such an incident as this ? To Homer if we may use that name to denote the authors it was all odious and of the prevailing tone of the Iliad But it was too firmly fixed in the tradition to be ugly.
denied.
part of the story, indeed, could be modified.
Hector was saved from torture.

killed first,
As we saw earlier, he was and dragged behind the chariot afterwards. But
sacrifice sacrifice
if
what of the sacrifice of the twelve Trojans ? Any was an important and lengthy act. The ordinary
of a bull in the Iliad has five lines allotted to
it,
or ten,
we count
in the roasting operations (A 458-67, B 421-30). You would expect this sacrifice to have at the very least twenty. As a matter of fact it is crowded into a shame!
faced line and a half
(^ 175).
And
:
that line and a half
is
merely part of another sentence

to itself.
it
has not a whole verb
followed by what certainly looks like one of the extremely rare phrases of moral condemnation in the Poems Yea, his heart devised evil deeds.' l You could
it is
'
:
And
scarcely have a clearer case of a poet recording a fact against his will. It is in a very different tone that the Book of Kings
records the
human
sacrifices of the pious Josiah,
when
'
'
he
slew
all
the priests of the
the altars,
xxiii.
w ere there, upon High and burned men's bones upon them (2 Kings
Places that
r
20
cf. 1
Kings xiii.
2,
where the word used
is 'sacrifice').
however, the fact stands recorded, and so does the maltreating of Hector's corpse. No other corpse is malso,
Even
treated in the Iliad.

1
It is a difficulty like this that brings

in
take
Some commentators, objecting to any moral judgement evil to mean merely evil to the victims
'
Homer,
'
'
'.
K2
132

Homer.
v
two
out the real greatness of
The whole
of the last
books of the Iliad
is
occupied with the psychological tragedy
of this foul action of Achilles.
Now in the first place there is not the faintest doubt of the general sympathy of the narrative. The gods, the reader, the poet, are all at one. There is no exultation in the barbarity
:
there
is
further.
Of
all
only bitter shame and regret. I will go the thousands of ferocious young soldiers,
Roman, mediaeval, and modern, who in their various days have read the Iliad and been ordered by their teachers
Greek,
it, it is hard to imagine a single one rising from two books with a feeling that it was a fine feat But to do as Achilles did, and mutilate your dead enemies.
to admire
these last
the wonderful thing that Homer does is to make you understand Achilles' state of mind. The cruelties which he practises are
those of a
man mad
it
sleepless,
who, when he
helpless tears.
And
grief, a man starving and at last, yields in a burst of yields makes some difference, also, that
with
Achilles
special
is
deliberately giving
up
his
own
life.
He
has the
supernatural knowledge that his revenge will be followed immediately by his death. He heaps all that he has, as it were, upon the pyre of the friend whom his own
1 petulance and pride has caused to die. with his vibrating sympathy, his amazing language, Homer, and that fiery splendour of narrative which seems to have
died out of the world

carry
off
when
these deeds of horror,
the Iliad was complete, can and leave Achilles a hero.
Yet, even
so, Achilles as a subject for poetry, like the actual Achilles of legend, paid for these savageries with an early death. It is curious how little the Greek poets cared for
1 tears, Starving and sleepless for twelve days, n 31 death, 2 96 ff.; cf. his wonderful words to Lycaon,
;
H 510 ff.
4>
?
His own
106-13:
'Nay,
friend, die like another
What
wouldst thou vainly weeping

!
Patroclus
died,
and
far better than thou. Look upon me Am I not beautiful and sprung of a good father, and a goddess the mother that bare me ? Yet, lo, Death standeth over me and the mighty hand of Doom. There cometh a dawn of day, a noon or an evening, and a hand that I know
who was
tall,
not shall lay
me
dead,' &c.
v
him.
ACHILLES: EDUCATION
133
;
He was the uncontested hero of their greatest epic Greek literature as a whole tends to pass him by. There yet is one lost Achillean trilogy by Aeschylus, of which it would there is one poignant and clever study of be rash to speak
:
Achilles in Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis.
Late philosophers
their pleasure.
little imaginawith lowlier heroes. He was associated compared with one of the sins that Greece most hated, and he had not enough depth and variety of character to make him
and pedagogues idealized or allegorized him at But he inspired little great poetry, and roused
tive interest
fascinating in spite of it. whose record in so many
Even the man of many wiles, ways was far from stainless for
speaks
instance, in that little matter of the arrows
much
normal Greek feeling. When his is accomplished and his wife and house delivered great victory from outrage, and the old Nurse is about to shriek for joy, he bids her keep her joy in her heart, and refrain and make no cry
more
in accordance with
Unholy
is
the voice
(x 412).
Of loud thanksgiving over slaughtered men
One cannot help remembering

education.
in this connexion that the
Iliad in the fifth century occupied a central place in
Greek
All well-born youths were trained
upon
'
it.
And
later Attic writers
speak with enthusiasm of the moral superi-
ority of
mean
they chiefly over the other ancient poets. If this educational use of the Iliad began in Ionia as early as the eighth
the Iliad
Homer
and when they say
'
Homer
century, which is likely enough, we can hardly help supposing that it had some share in these processes of purification with which we have been dealing. The hand of the schoolmaster
certainly seems to
different
have been at work
though
of course
by
in the case of another poet much used in education, Theognis. Such parts of his poetry as are obviously
methods
unedifying are relegated to a sort of appendix at the end of But the book, and in many MSS. are omitted altogether. 1
1 Edifying passages from the old Ionic hortatory writers seem to have been introduced into Homer. See Mulder, as cited below, Lecture VII, Also Brcal, Pour mieux connaitre Homere, pp. 14 f. p. 169.
134

is
on the whole the probability
that the use of
Homer
;
in
education was only to a slight extent an influence in proit ducing this general cleaning up of the ancient traditions
was more largely a
result.
Further consideration of this subject would lead us too far I am content for the present moment if I have shown afield.
and
the mere fact that there was in the formation of the Iliad, to a less extent in that of the Odyssey, a strong element
of reform and expurgation. The epic tradition of Greece, vast and tangled in its wealth of varied beauty and ugliness as some South American forest, was left by the Homeric
much cleaner and colder thing than they found it. In this result two influences chiefly were at work. First, a general humanizing of the imagination, the progress of
poets a
it loved beauty, hated cruelty and unSecondly, a race prejudice. The relations of the Northern and the aboriginal elements in the Homeric poems
spirit
which, as
cleanness.
are involved,
fusion.
more
of
when you come to details, in inextricable conBut in general the Homeric tone of mind represents the Achaean or northern spirit; the spirit of those
'
'
scattered strong men, who in their various settlements were leading and shaping the Aegean world. The special myths, beliefs, and rites that were characteristic of the conquered
races are pruned oracles, the magic
away
or ignored,
'
the hero-worship, the

of purifi-
and witchcraft, the hocus-pocus

savours
of
cation
all
',
women
the monstrous regiment of the uncanny powers of dead men, and the baleful
that
confusion between
man and
god.
is
Yet race prejudice is not quite the word. It For it finds ideal, and more than a race ideal.
a race
its
main
impulse not in any maintenance of actual Northern tribes, past or existing, but in the building up of something yet
The earlier bards had perhaps no name for this was only a quality which one felt in true Achaioi, thing or Argeioi. The later poets knew it as Hellenism. Danaoi, the great division between Hellenes and barbaroi is True,
unborn.
;
it
never in so
many words
expressed in the conventional Ian-
THE HOMERIC SPIRIT
135
guage of the Epos. The idea is too new, or too shy, to come nakedly forward. But the feeling is there so strongly that
it
'
eventually the word cannot be kept out, and it enters, when does enter, in a strengthened and more un-Epic form Pan-Hellenes' or, rather more timidly, Pan-Achaioi '.
:
'
Hellenism, as has often been remarked, denotes really not

a unity of race, but a unity of culture. Through all antiquity the sons of Hellen were reckoned according to the spirit, not
expresses just this. the great name to all who It implies a readiness to extend are willing to bear its burden, all who will live as Hellenes
the flesh.
And
the word
'
Pan-Hellenes
'
and take
sides with Hellas.
Students of early Greek tradition are constantly brought up against a certain broad contrast, between what is Homeric
and what
is local.
The
local religion, the local legend, the
Greek to Greek these are things for which has in general no place. The Pan-Hellenism of Homer Homer but it strikes him much, strikes a reader even at first sight more keenly when he reflects in what a network of feuds
local hatred of
;
and
fears
and mutual abhorrences the

'
life of
primitive com;
munities is involved.
shalt not abhor
thou an Egyptian,' says the Deuteronomist, break-
Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite
the wall of hatred at particular points by definite The Homeric bards issue no such commands. injunctions.
ing
down
They draw
strike unnoticed at the root of the
whole system.
'
They
into the great orbit of the Epos the ancestral heroes of the most diverse tribes. They show all Greeks labouring
'
them suitably idealized, all good men and true. They ignore everything that is really tribal and exclusive, all the peculiar local rites, the taboo tombs and secret names,
together, all of
which formed the very core of each little village worship. They will deal only with such gods as can stand publicly in
the eyes of all Greece. It was a great attempt, and involved But sacrifice. a great perhaps ultimately a disastrous 1 its Book. meantime Greece came into being and found
1
For an instance
of the extension of this spirit to the
'
Homeric Hymns
'
see
Appendix G.
VI

II.
EVIDENCES
I
BUT
let
us turn to a question of evidence.
have been
arguing on general grounds that what we should expect to find in the Homeric poems is some form of Traditional Book, which, like the Song of Roland, or the Niebelungenlied, or even
the Pentateuch, has reached its present form by a process of gradual growth and constant rehandling. That is what we
should expect. our expectation.

is
And
our study of the expurgations confirms But is there in the poems themselves definite
is actually what happened ? There and I will ask you to spend some time in considering At this point, unfortunately, the air begins to thicken it. with controversy, and controversy generally obscures under-
evidence to show that this

:
standing. I propose to argue as little as possible, but merely to make a re-statement of some of the evidence already
observed by various Homeric critics. My case will be by no means complete. The evidence of language, for instance, to my mind the most fundamental of all, is not suitable for But my object all through is discussion in these lectures. illustration rather than argument.
/ in
/
What we require for our purpose which we already have reason to
will
be a
series of cases
believe that a change of
custom took place between the Mycenaean and the Classical ages, that is, roughly speaking, between the thirteenth century If the Iliad is, as we have argued, B. c. and the seventh.
a traditional book, modified by succeeding generations,
shall expect to discover
we
some
traces of this process.
Probably
we
shall find, roughly speaking, that on the surface the poem complies with the later customs, while deeper down there are
vi
ARMOUR
IN
HOMER
137
For it is, by our hypothesis, an ancient of the older. worked over from time to time to suit various new poem
marks
generations.
Let
to
amounting
me say at once that demonstration. There
we
is
shall find nothing
no
possibility of
demonstration in the case.
We
shall only find a
number
of
comparatively small and inconspicuous phenomena which are quite simple and normal if the Iliad is a traditional book,
and extremely puzzling
if it is
not.
Perhaps the clearest case is the change of armour. The Greek of Classical times was a conspicuous figure in his Ionian panoply. He was clad in solid metal from head to foot helmet, breastplate and backplate, small round shield, and
:
greaves,
Psammetichus, king of Egypt, was driven from his throne, he was told by the oracle at Buto to find bronzen men who would restore him. He found
all of
metal.
When
them
ii.
in the shape of Ionian

1
and Carian mercenaries (Hdt.
152).
Now the dress of the Mycenaean warrior was quite different. He had a leather He was not in the least a bronzen man sometimes perhaps adorned with bits of metal. He helmet,
'
'.
may have had sometimes

1
a thick waistcoat or jerkin of linen
to serve for a breastplate,
and
soft leather leggings in place
rather
armour came into general use is not clear. It was evidently strange to Psammetichus, or to the Ionian inventors of the Psammetichus story. It is quite conceivable that it may have been, in some elements, a revival of something long forgotten, much as the art of A sort of cuirass is represented on the clay tablets the same period was. from Cnossos (Evans, Cor. Num., 1906, p. 357 cf. Hogarth and Bosanquet in J. H. 8. xxii), but, curiously enough, it does not occur in Minoan art The stiff wide garments worn by e.g. the central as a garment for warriors. figure in the harvest procession from Hagia Triada and certain worshippers on seals are no doubt rightly explained by Professor Burrows as ritual copes (pp. 37, 207 and Hogarth and Bosanquet, 1. c.). In Cyprus there is evidence for a kind of cuirass and round shield in art as early as Mycenaean Evans considers that they came into the Aegean from the southtimes.
this
When
new and
east
apparently to be forgotten again until they were re-introduced by the Bronzen Men (Journal Arch. InsL, 1900, p. 213, and Fig. 5, p. 209). Mr. Lang uses these points against Reichel's argument that the breastplates and then adds in a characin Homer were of much later introduction
'
'
teristic fit of
candour
'
:
Possibly they were.'
138

1
vi
of greaves. But normally he wore only a loin-cloth and a linen tunic, while instead of any corselet or body-armour he used the loose skins of beasts, treated in one of two main
ways. The common man got the best beast-skin he could, the fell of a wolf, a goat, a pard, or, if he could afford it, an ox he tied this skin by the paw s round his neck and let it
r
hang. Then in battle he caught the lower flapping edge with his left hand and held the skin tight in front of him. It would keep off stones and arrows and perhaps sword cuts, and would give him at least one extra chance of dodging the cast of a
For he could whisk the skin aside as the spear pierced it. The chieftain or rich man improved upon this simple defence. He had his ox-hide dried and made stiff and held in position by cross staves of wood. As to the shape, the hide might
spear.
be
left
roughly in
its
a shield, as covered the
Homer says, like a tower.' man admirably from head to

'
natural condition, a sort of oblong Such a shield

;
fortunately it a spear-thrust.
foot. But unwas a little weak. It could be pierced by To meet that difficulty you could of course
increase the thickness.
You
could have two, three, or four

' '
But that increased the weight very Aias is said to have had a shield like a tower seriously. If so, it consisting of seven ox-hides and a layer of metal. must have weighed rather more than twenty stone we need not be surprised that it was famous, nor yet that no one else would have anything to do with it. But you could
hides instead of one.
;
device. 2
strengthen the shield without adding to the weight by another Take a piece of the rim of the ox-hide about the
sides,
middle on both
a piece about a foot long, squeeze
it
together and at the same time draw both pieces inwards. That will make the shield bulge out, both vertically and
horizontally,
It will so
till it
be stronger in itself the centre with a piece of metal

1
projects into a boss or point in the centre. it can easily be coated in

;
;
and, thirdly, weapons will
Sec also Mackenzie in B. S. A. xii (1905-6). This remark I owe to Mr. J. L. Myres, who has not, I believe, yet published his views on the Homeric shield.
2
vi
MYCENAEAN FIGHTING
off
139
glance
is,
from
it.
The
price
you pay
shield
of course, that
is
you make your
for these advantages narrow in the middle.
That
one reason, says Mr. Myres,
why
so
many
people in
Homer get wounded in the thigh or flank. Now this shield was not regularly fixed on the arm like the later small shields. It was supported by a strap which passed over the left shoulder and under the right arm. The
cross-staves perhaps formed a kind of handle by which you could move it to and fro at need steer your dry ox, as Hector
|
But you could, if necessary, let the shield expresses and advance on your enemy holding a great simply swing, spear in both hands, or two smaller spears, one in each hand. The shield was so heavy that the warrior usually went in
it.
a chariot to the place where he wished to fight. Arrived there, he dismounted and stood with the shield like a tower
c
'
in
front
of him, or
'
edged himself step by step forward
'
(virao-nibta Trpoirobifav) into striking distance,
being careful to
keep always under cover. Dangerous moments were those of getting down from the chariot, or getting up again, or turning There was also some danger of tripping, both to retreat.
when you turned and while you moved forward. For your shield-rim was close upon the ground, and you could not
safely look so far over the top as to see the earth close in When once you were in position, however, the front of you.
cover was excellent, and there ensued what Homer calls a stadie husmine, a standing battle '. If no vital part of
c
into conversation with him.
your enemy showed round the edge anywhere, you entered A happily directed insult might lift his head too high, or expose a piece of make him start,
his flank.
Then you speared him.
If
you were a very strong
man, you could try to drive your spear clean through all his Or you layers of ox-hide and reach his unarmoured body. could even, as Hector and Aias sometimes did, by a blow
with a huge stone, knock his shield right back upon him and send him flat on the ground beneath it.
1 daA<V, H 238. Herodotus uses the metaphor more vuwffai &wv awrivoiai otyKistrongly of the pre-Carian, i.e. Mycenaean, shield r\a^w<n foi/T9, ITfpl TOtffl aVX*** 1 T f fol TOlffl dplffTpOlffl WfJLOKTl irfplKfifJlfVOl (1. 171).
|
140
vi
different
Peculiar and special tactics, as any one can see ; and quite from those of men armed with a small shield and
a breastplate.
But now let us observe one particular piece of what I may call the normal defensive drill. Suppose an enemy
threw his spear with
all his
force against your shield, the

'
proper plan, since you could not move the heavy ox swiftly about, was to edge it as best you could in one direction and
yourself twist rapidly in the other.
'
Then even
if
the spear
came
right through your shield,
it
probably missed you or
only grazed your side.
Now what sort of armour, and what sort of tactics, do the Homeric poems describe ? It ought to be quite easy to say,
considering
tain.
how much
close description of fighting they conif
you consult Dr. Reichel, the he will tell you that discoverer of this whole the Homeric heroes all fight in Mycenaean armour with the large shield and no breastplate, except for some few late
of fact,
series of facts,
As a matter
interpolated passages. If you turn to Dr. Ridgeway, he will explain that the heroes all have metal breastplates and round
some fewindividuals withPelasgian antecedents. Neither of these admirable writers has, I think, faced the fact of the gradual growth of the poems. 1 Each tries to make
shields, except
the poems square with one style of fighting or the other, and
when they
That
is
refuse to
fair
do
so,
not a
way
to behave.
proceeds to casuistry or violence. We must take the poems

is
as they stand.
And, as they stand, the main impression
pretty clear.
surface speaks of the late Ionian fighting, the heart of the narrative is Mycenaean.
The
By
'
the surface
'
of the
poems
mean such
parts as the
formulae of introduction and transition, the general descriptive phrases, the inorganic lines and some of the perpetual
hear all these are full of the Men of Bronze. epithets countless times of the greaved Greeks ', 2 of the bronze-clad
:
We
'
'
See Robert, Studien zur

i).
Ilias,
who makes
this
same
criticism
on Reichel
(chap.
2
Reichel says the word t//n/77/x(5es, only once *X.O.\KOKVII infos, so that with good gaiters '. But gaiters, even when not hidden only means behind a big shield, are not conspicuous or exciting objects, whereas the
c
vi
HOMERIC FIGHTING
',
141
'
bronzen breastplates 44=0 62), of 'the whole plain blazing with bronze' (A (T 156), of how men's eyes were blinded by the glitter of bronze from blazing helms and breastplates new-burnished
Greeks
of
the clash of
'
men
in
and gleaming shields (N 341), of a w arrior whose whole body shone with bronze, like the lightning of aegis-bearing
r
'
'
(A 66), or who gleams with the bronze wherein his body is clad (M 463, cf. N 191, X 32, 134, &c., &c.). It is the Men of Bronze everywhere. The gods who watch the battle
Zeus
'
'
'
look
down upon
'
the
flashing of bronze,
men slain we find in

of bronze
83).
And not
only
is it it
this sort of passage,

',
but
men slaying and men of bronze that is the tactics of men

' '
'
the
movement
of ordered regiments of infantry
in line, obeying their officers
and making concerted move'
Greek hoplitae. The Trojans came on, like lines of waves on the sea, line behind line, flashing N 801). The in bronze, together with their commanders ( Greeks advanced in silence and in order, fearing their commanders, their hearts set upon supporting one another That is the way in which Nestor from (F 1-9, A 427-32).
ments, like the classical
' '
'
time to time exhorts the Greeks to
'
fight,
so that clan shall
It is the way (B 362 f.). support clan, we are told, the god Ares, as a professional, especially which, commended that men should advance in phalanxes, or lines,
and
tribe tribe
'
in close array, shield touching shield, an impenetrable wall (N 126, 130 ff., 145). It is in this way that people are said
But to be going to fight before each great battle begins. it is not at all in this way that they really strangely enough fight when the battle is fairly joined, in the heart of the
In the heart of the poem, when the real fighting It is essentially as a rule purely Mycenaean. comes, bronze greaves of a line of men marching would be both, as the legs moved and the bronze glittered. An epithet of this sort must be taken from something striking. I am informed by the Hon. Oliver Howard that among
poem.
it is
the Suras, a tribe which he fought with in Northern Nigeria in 1907, the cavalry wore permanent iron greaves fastened on by a blacksmith so that they could never be taken off, and fitted with a blunt spur on the inside of the calf. They wore nothing else, except perhaps a loin-cloth. I know
of
nothing like this in antiquity, however.
142
vi
a battle of promachoi, or champions. Usually each champion drives forward on his chariot, dismounts and stands forth
alone behind his big shield, to engage in a series of duels. At most two or three occasionally form together in a small
1 At certain rare mogroup to check a rout or an advance. into the thick of a yielding foe. ments they drive their chariots We have illustrated enough already the tactics of these
Mycenaean promacJioi or champions in the forefront '. But the background of the Mycenaean battle deserves a word in Behind the great shielded champions there seem to passing. have lurked, in the real Mycenaean battle first, individual
distinguished archers, sometimes crouching behind the shield of a promachos in the very front, sometimes taking cover
j
s
'
it offered ; and secondly, an almost unarmed rabble, shooting arrows and little darts and stones from the sling or the bare hand, making as terrible a noise as they could, and defending themselves with their flapping laise/ia. Now the
wherever
distinguished archers are of course present in the Iliad? but on the whole the bow is somewhat fallen in repute, and, as
one might expect,

cern
its
little is
said of the rabble.
We
can
dis-
existence clearly enough.
We
hear
how
the Trojans
in one place
come on like flocks of birds, screeching as they come (F 2). We have a good many mentions of the stones and arrows coming from no specified hand. 3 But in the main
those undignified adjuncts of the ancient battle have tended to be forgotten or omitted. The later poets were full of the of Bronzen Men and the tough hand-to-hand deathpride
shock of spear and

history.
1
shield, as
we hear
of it in classical
Greek
This
is
perhaps the movement indicated on the small vase from Hagia
Triada, described by Burrows (p. 38) from Paribeni in Rendiconti, Ace. Line. xii. p. 324. See A, Mosso, Escursione nel Mediterraneo, Figs. 33, 34.
See Lang, Homer and his Age, 136 ff. Arrows, r 79, A 191, 4 113, O 313, &c. ; stones, M 154, n 774: but in general scarcely a xtpnatiiov is mentioned in the Iliad but has its definite thrower. I suspect that every big stone lying on the plain of Troy had its legend. It was thrown there by Aias or Hector or Aeneas or Diomedes, as similar stones in Cornwall have generally been thrown by St. Paul, or
2
else
by the Devil.
vi
NOT VARIETY BUT CONFUSION

Let us stay a
*
143
moment
at this point.
?
'
objected,
is this
going to prove
Why
What,' it may be should you expect
a mixed army, collected from all parts of Greece, to be uniform in its accoutrement ? The army of Xerxes contained Persian, Median, and Assyrian soldiers, with the best weapons
that the century could produce, together with Ethiopians clad
in lion
and leopard skins, and armed with stone-pointed arrows, and Sagartians who carried daggers and lassos. The Chinese army in the late war against Japan contained some soldiers armed with the newest rifles, and some with bows
and arrows.' The variety
in the
armour would not prove much.
But
the fact that the poets are not conscious of the variety proves There is a confusion of thought. The men a great deal. 1
are, so to speak, advertised as fighting in
one way, and then
they proceed to fight in another. of the poems it is understood that, unless otherwise stated, each hero is clad in the normal armour of a Greek warrior.
The
fact is that in all parts
Only
in different parts of the
poems that normal armour
is
different.
As a general rule this difference was either not noticed by but in one or the successive poets or was allowed to pass two points an actual correction of the text has been made.
;
There must have been a time

seventh century
fare
perhaps in the eighth or when the whole conception of knightly war-
was wrapped up in these hand-to-hand battles of Bronzen in full armour, and it seemed merely ridiculous to have heroes going to battle in their shirts. No audience would
Men
like
it. Consequently all the heroes were summarily provided with breastplates, 0co/)?/Ky. The details of a story might but it sometimes be made unintelligible by the breastplate
;
was. all very rapid and full of fire, expect to understand every detail
and an audience need not

!
1 When the poet is conscious of a variety of armour he describes it with obvious interest. Cf. N 712 ff. the Locrians had no bronze helmets nor round shields and ashen spears they came with bows, you know (apa), and cords of sheep-gut
'
:
'
144
vi
To take a typical instance. There occur two passages where a man performs the sleight which we mentioned above. 1 His enemy's spear comes right through his shield, but, standing
well
back from the
shield,
he twists aside, and the weapon

:
grazes past him. These passages originally must have run Right through the shining shield came the strong spear, but he twisted aside and escaped black death.' But in our texts
'
an inorganic line that is, a line whose presence or absence makes no difference to the grammatical construction has
And the passages the shining shield came the strong Right through 2 spear, and was driven heavily through the richly-wrought breastbut he twisted aside and escaped black death.' Too plate
been added, containing the breastplate.
'
:
now run
;
from a spear that is coming through not from one that has already driven your shield, but
late
!
You can
twist aside
'
'
your breastplate. an arrow in A 134 ff. whose performances are described at great length, and very puzzling they are. I will not discuss them now. But you will find in reading the passage that the main difficulty is this. The arrow is aimed at Menelaus, and would have killed him, but providentially it hit just where the clasps of his girdle met, so that there was a double protection. It went through his girdle, and
heavily through
There
is
also through his mitre
whatever that was
'
which was
his
This is greatest defence ', and just wounded him slightly. stated when the arrow strikes it is repeated by Menelaus himself when he explains that he is not much hurt. He also
:
pushes back his girdle and sees the wound, with the barbs of the arrow outside it. That is all clear. But in the description of the wound this same inorganic line has been added.
The arrow
'
is
breastplate ', the girdle matter

1
driven heavily right through his rich- wrought and all is confusion. What did the clasps of
if
there
252,
was a
Hector:
'
solid
metal breastplate there
r 358, Paris;
'
cf.
436,
Sokos
and
136,
Menelaus.
a
f]pr)piaTo,
was
pressed,' or
s,
driven with weight
',
rti ftiaiov
TT/S 7^77777?
Schol.
BL.
vi
THE THOREX
could Menelaus see the
145
How
wound
Why
is
there so
c
much
talk about the piercing of the girdle,
was his greatest defence ', more remarkable piercing of the breastplate ? l Before leaving this subject, there are two points which we
should notice for the sake of their historical significance. In the first place, while the breastplate and the modern shield
{
and the mitre which and not a word about the much
have been inserted almost

trace of
fact
1
all
through the
Iliad, there is
no
them
in the Odyssey. 2
striking instance of the
we have
noticed before, that the Odyssey has been alto-
I think the Owprjg and the furpr] are both interpolated here. It was the double thickness of the girdle that saved him. Professor Robert thinks that Menelaus had a Mycenaean 0<vprj or waistcoat, and that the If so, it was in 0w/>?7-line, interpolated in other places, is original here.
any case misunderstood

additions in other ways.
equally well.
and the passage looks as if it had received Robert's view, however, would suit my purpose There must have been intervening stages between the
;
:
Mycenaean s and .the Bronze Men. It is worth observing that the Owprjgline makes a slight grammatical awkwardness wherever it occurs it brings Possible language in a KO! clause between n\v and 5*. but odd that it should occur always Apart from the above passages the making of the ihCrex plays a curiously small part in the Armour-Making, 2 478-613
:
!
134 lines are given to the shield, one to the thorex, one to the greaves, two to the helmet. That is, the shield was originally all that mattered
much.
And
in
T 259
Achilles
does seem rather to forget that
he has
a breastplate. Again, in n 801 ff., Apollo, by a blow with the flat of his hand, makes Patroclus stagger, so that his helmet falls off and he but the bard who drops his shield. That originally left him unarmed
;
armed him with a breastplate has had to add the disastrous

'
line
804
!
And
(\va shield of Heracles in Hesiod (Aspis, 139-320), but the superpositions are more complicated. The shield gives its name to the poem, and has 180 lines
of description, the rest of the accoutrement sixteen. But this is not all. Apparently in the groundwork of the poem the hero had a Mycenaean
the Lord, the son of Zeus, Apollo, also unbuckled his breastplate 5c ot OwprjKa ava Aios vtos 'ATroAAcyy). It is much the same with the
'
shield for practically his whole defence. Then, as in Achilles' case, other armour is added. But Heracles in tradition was represented not only as
he was also an archer, also a korunek's or club-bearer. Consequently in Hesiod (122-38) Heracles wears, all at the same time, greaves, an iron club a quiver and arrows ; a spear, and breastplate, and helmet a Mycenaean shield He is spared the bow.
a hoplite
;
;
Nor yet
in K,
which
is
very curious.
Apparently the breastplate
When K was modified interpolations took place while K was still separate. and inserted in the Iliad the interest in the armour question had died
down.
Perhaps the old style of armour had been forgotten altogether.
146

'
vi
gether less worked over, expurgated, and modernized than what books still persist in calling without qualification the
Iliad
secondly, there is a curious point in the of the epic style is, as we all know, the conventional epithet. All objects of interest have descripolder
poem
'.
And
itself.
mark
to them, and among such objects are, of course, shields. Now you would expect, if the poet had a clear conception of what he was describing, that the epithets would show at once whether a particular
tive adjectives habitually attached
shield was conceived as the great Mycenaean tower of oxBut hide or the small round metal targe of later Greece. When indeed a shield is called \dhKtov, in fact it is not so.
'
bronzen,' there
:
is
a slight presumption that

or
*
it is of
the later
'
type
*
when
it is aptyippoTri,
J
,
770677^6x775,
man -enveloping
it is of the earlier. or reaching to the feet But as regards the greater part of the epithets, scholars differ. Reichel and Leaf try to make as many as possible suit the Mycenaean
shield.
shields
Ridgeway does the opposite. What is clear is that which must from the tactics have been Mycenaean,
*
' *
which are, for instance, large enough to cover a man from head to foot, are called round or even in every direction or orbed or bossy ', words which at first sight seem to much more naturally to the later shield. 1 This seems apply to show that the poets tended to use these purely traditional
' '
*
'
epithets without reflecting exactly
were describing.
what sort of a shield they That is the usual way of traditional poetry. 2
Let us briefly run through some other cases where the changing customs of different ages have left their marks upon the poems. There is the change from bronze to iron. The
excavations have produced no iron at Mycenae, and only two
little
lumps at Troy.
No weapons
of iron
in the pre-Hellenic remains anywhere. And the epic tradition is very clear and vigorous.
have been found on this subject Bronze is the

'
proper metal of war

8
Ares himself
is
\d\Ktos,
bronzen,'
See Lecture
IX on
this point.
vi
BRONZE AND IRON: BURIAL

{
147
and
the bronze
as
,a
'
known
axes. 1
rare
proverbially means the sword '. and very hard material, difficult
Iron
is
to work,
but suitable for ploughshares, for clubs, for arrow heads, for It is only now and then by accident that a later
' ' '
poet drops into using iron for a sword or spear, as we should use steel '. Antilochos is afraid lest Achilles should
'
cut his throat with the iron
'
writhe about the iron

'
'
(^ 30)
a proverbial phrase, iron itself a temptation (TT 294, r 13). Of course, though these mentions of iron show clearly that the writers knew of iron weapons, the general use of bronze and bronzen is no sign that the
' '
Slaughtered oxen most strikingly of all, in draws a man on a weapon is

(2 34).
:
'
'
'
'
writers
still
used bronze weapons.

to
The memory
of a bronze
j
1
have stamped itself on the language of poetry. iage happens All Greek poetry was archaistic in language is all. JThat because it was permeated by a sense of style. It felt that modern words and phrases were out of tone with the heroic Swords are spoken of as bronze down to the latest past. times of the Greek epic, when such a thing as a bronze sword had perhaps not been seen for centuries. Less vigorous was the memory of antique funeral customs. The Mycenaean and Minoan dead were of course buried it is practically certain that the rich were also embalmed in 2 The Homeric dead, for reasons that we discussed honey.
' '
;
above, are burned.

lingers on.
after his death.
But a
faint
memory
till
of the old
custom
Hector was not burned

413, 665, 785
'
the twenty-second day Achilles himself was not burned till the
;
eighteenth
I
(Q, 31,
o>
65).
come from a time when embalming was practised. word which meant or embalm preserve
'
' '
Surely those facts The actual

(rapxveiv) is
Hesiod also thinks of iron in connexion with work rather than fighting. v TO, /icAas 5* OVK iicr/cf ffldrjpos. Erga, 150 \a\K(t) 5' p * On the gradual change from bronze to iron and burial to burning in
1
yao
Crete
which, however, occurred mainly at the end of Late Minoan Ill-
Bee Burrows, pp. 100 f. As to the faintness of the memory, it is interesting to note that in Scandinavia the general testimony of early writers put burning before burial the reverse of the truth. See above, p. 47, note.
Dorpfeld believes in a combination of Congres Archeol. a Athenes, 1905, p. 161.
the two,
Comptes Rendus du
L2
148

Homer
This
is
vi
used in
ashes.
to denote the ordinary burying of burned a clear case of survival, though sometimes,
*
from
its
to itself a metaphorical suggestion of

*
very inappositeness to mere burial, the word gathered preserving the dead
'
His brethren and kindred will preserve man's memory. him with a mound and a pillar for that is the honour of the dead (II 456, 674). The honey once used for embalming
:
'
is
vaguely associated with the last rites, though its meaning has been forgotten. When Patroclus was burned
still
upon a pyre they set leaning against the bier two great jars And Achilles himself was of honey and unguents (V 170). burned in raiment of the gods and plenteous unguents and sweet honey (o> 67). The honey and unguents were useless but man was reluctant to stint his beloved dead of any honour that he had once given him.
* '
:
There
;
is
a very interesting development in the forms of
worship. The oldest Greek worship, like the Semitic, had no temples and no graven images. You did not make a god, You found him found him dwelling at least not consciously. in some strange rock, some ancient tree, in the water that came from unknown depths and made the earth fertile. You found him in the pillar that supported your dwelling, but
:
in the battle-axe that fought for you might at any moment wilfully break or miss 1 And where its aim or turn in your hand and betray you. found him you worshipped, and gave him sacrifice. you
might
fall, if
angered
so bravely, but
Hence come the pillars and high places ', the Hebrew bamoth, At later stages you marked off a little and Greek bomoi.
space around the divine object as specially sacred or haunted this was a Temenos, a Precinct. Later still, as the faithful proceeded to make offerings to the god at this precinct, you
:
must needs have a resident

eventually, since, in spite of
priest to act as caretaker

all
and
the most appalling curses on
1 See especially Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult, in J. H. 8. xxi ; R. Smith, Religion of Semites, pp. 97, 135, &c. W. M. Ramsay on Anatolian Of course the combination of aniReligion in Diet. BibL, extra volume. conic and iconic forms is common in later Greek religion Prolegomena,
;
* '
'
pp. 18
ff.,
and ASHBEAH
in Encyc. Bibl.
vi
sacrilege
TEMPLES AND ALTARS
149
which society could devise, the offerings, hung on or set in the crannies of the rock, became too great the tree a temptation to passers-by, it was best in the end to build
a properly walled house for the god and his belongings to dwell in. How the images of the god arose it is not clear. Dr. Reichel l believed that in general thrones came before
images. You found on some rock or high place some sign of the god's habitation, a place where he sat or stepped or in your temple the like. You improved the seat for him
;
and eventually you put an The image would of the god himself to sit there. image For the very simplest always serve an important purpose. way of getting a god to do something was to have an image The chief difficulty lies of him and make the image do it. perhaps in the transition from the real fetish to the mere
still
you made a
better seat,
imitation or image.
artificial
I find it difficult to see
how a
purely
image can originally have been worshipped except
as
an imitation of something already known or supposed Our early Greeks, driven out and cut off from their o latural holy places, would be reduced to making with their 3wn hands imitations of the god whom they had left behind.
exist.
Now
it is
clear that during the greater part of the Iliad

'
and Odyssey worship is carried on at High Places or altars in the open air. We were gathered round a spring by the under a beautiful plane-tree, where bright water holy altars, ran so says the Iliad of the sacrifice at Aulis, where appeared the wonder of the birds and the snake (B 305, cf. 238 f.). So in the Odyssey 162) the sight of Nausicaa reminds Odysseus of the young palm-tree which he saw growing
'
:
'
beside Apollo's altar
'
at Delos.
It did
not grow indoors.

'
You
:
hear normally not of the Temple of any god, but of the very
beautiful oak of aegis-bearing Zeus ( E 693, 328, T 297) 60, of Athene's grove beside the way, all of poplars and spring
4 ; '
water runs through it, and meadow-land is all around (f 291) of a grove of Poseidon, a grove and altars of the Nymphs.
'
Then
occasionally
1
we hear
of a temenos, a precinct fenced
Vorhellehische Ootterculte.
150
off
from
THE RISE OF THE GREEK EPIC common life. We hear twice of the marble
vi
thres:
hold of the Archer Apollo in rocky Pytho (I 404, 6 80) and lastly, some seven times in all, we hear of definite temples.
description not only of a temple and the but of a definite seated statue of the goddess Athena, on whose knees a robe is to be laid, as at the Panathenaea and similar festivals. Is not that a ritual centuries
is
In Z there
full
worship therein,
later, one asks, than the sacrifice by the spring at Aulis ? And observe a curious point. Chryses, in the first book of
the Iliad,
is
a very antique
'
figure,
',
not exactly a
or areter, like
priest,
but
Balaam, son of Beor, in the Book of Numbers. And naturally, when he performs his sacrifice, he does so (A 446 ff.) at an altar in the open air. Yet in the introductory prologue he is made
rather a professional
cursing-man
to cry to his Mouse- God with the appeal, If ever I roofed ' for thee a gracious temple It is the same pheno(A 39).
'
menon which we
noticed in the case of the armour.
The
writer of that line did not observe that in his original there
/
altar. To him an altar implied a temple, so he took the temple for granted. It is the same with another social change, affecting marriage customs. In the primitive ages of Greece, as Aristotle has
had been no temple, only an
remarked
their
(Pol.
1268
'
b),
men
carried
women from one
another.'
weapons and bought That is, the suitor paid
a price, normally calculated in oxen, to the father of the In classical bride, who thus became her husband's property.
Greece the custom was just the opposite. The father gave sum of money with his daughter to induce the suitor to
her. Speaking very broadly, this means that in the times there were not enough women for the marriage early market, in the later times too many. It would seem that the
marry
first custom arose in an age when, owing to dire poverty and continual wars, men hesitated a good deal about rearing their children at all, and especially were reluctant to burden them-
There is something touching in the frequency with which during the heroic times you find names of women compounded from bous, an ox. Oxen were the
selves with daughters.
vi
DOWRIES
151
gold currency of the time, and these names express the excuse which the parents made to themselves for venturing to rear
The real reason was simply that they But they would never allege that. It is not the way with the human race to avow such motives. We are much too shy. No doubt their neighbours and the less
the useless female child.
could not bear to
kill it.
agreeable of their elder relatives considered it extravagant of them, foolishly sentimental or ostentatious. Well, may be it was
:
all perhaps the girl would good price some so they called her Alphesiboia, winner of kine, Phereboia, bringer-in-of-kine, Polyboia, worth many kine, or Stheneboia,
but after
:
bring in a
day
Periboia, Eeriboia, Meliboia,
and the
rest of the
names.
'
the poems as a rule maintain this older conception of the marriage bargain. Hector bore his bride out from
the halls of Eetion,
Now
when he had paid
countless bride-gifts
'
(X 472).
bride,
and
Iphidamas was slain before he brought home his had no joy of her, though he gave a great price
' '
(A 243).
Othryoneus, the
suitor
of
Cassandra, gave his

:
services in the
(N 366 cf. A. 289). Hephaistos in the Odyssey, when Aphrodite is false to him, vows that he will keep her in prison till her father returns all the bride-gifts, yea, all that I put in his hand for the
of a bride-gift
'
war instead
There are special sake of his dog-faced maiden (0 319). Old Altes cases where the opposite practice is mentioned.
gave a great dower to his daughter Laothoe when she married (X 51). Agamemnon, among the gorgeous gifts with which he
vainly sues Achilles, offers to give him one of his daughters, not only without exacting a bride-gift, but giving her a dowry
as well
(I
'
146
ff.).
There
is
also
an intermediate stage in
which the
not to the bride's father, but to the bride herself. 1 They seem not so much a real gift as a proof of the suitor's power to maintain a wife.
gifts are paid,
Now,
so far, the evidence

:
might be interpreted in either

cf.
1 cf. Schol. n 178 C 159 'Haiovav itfiQuv. The code of
also
Aesch. Prom. 559
Hammurabi
ZSvois ayayes has marks of an intermediate
The suitor paid a bride-price to the stage, practically equivalent to this. father, and the father also gave a dowry which normally included the return of the bride-price, but did not always do so.
See
Ham.
160, 163, 104.
152
vi
It might denote a long progress of time during of two ways. which customs changed, or it might point merely to an age of transition in which all three customs existed simultaneously.
Two
passages in a very late part of the Odyssey decide the Let Telemachus bid his mother go question (ft 194, a 278).
'
back to her father's house. And the folk there shall make a marriage-feast and furnish eedna in plenty, such as are meet to go with a dear daughter.' A dowry is meant but
;
the word used

'
'
is ee6ya,
bride-gift.'
The
writer of the lines
was accustomed to the later practice of fytpvr] or ?rpot, dowry,' and mistook the meaning of eedra because he had forgotten the custom (cf. also /3 53). It is the same with the question of the Homeric house.
One reason
for the divergent theories of scholars
about that
elusive object has been that they tried to
one form of house, and there are really house of Odysseus at the end in the Battle with the Suitors
stands by itself. It is a Mycenaean palace, not unlike Tiryns, as Mr. Myres has shown. 1 But the normal house of both
the Iliad and Odyssey
is
work with only The at least three.
quite different.
There seem to have
been two types of house in the Aegean in early times, the Cretan or Southern palace and the Hellenic or Northern one-
roomed Megaron '. The Cretan palace consists of countless rooms leading one out of the other, and a whole structure so
complicated that it has perhaps given rise to the story of the Its main rooms tended to have the entrance door labyrinth. or doors on the long wall of the room so that the southern
'
sun came in through the broad opening. Consequently they had no fireplace. 2 The Hellenic house was like a modern shed or a Greek temple in antis, an oblong building with
a door at the narrow end, a porch in front, and a fireplace in the centre of the big hall, which was called megaron or In the palaces of Greece proper, Mycenae, Tiryns, thalamos. and Arne in Lake Copais, this northern megaron has been
J. H. S. vol. xx, and Monro's Odyssey, Appendix VI. There is a central hearth in the second city at Troy perhaps owing to the climate, perhaps to some exceedingly early influx of Northerners.
1
t
vi
'
HOUSES
'
153
scheme of the Cretan combined with the labyrinthine But in the Iliad and Odyssey the houses are norpalaces. mally one-room halls. The master and mistress live in the megaron in the daytime and sleep there at night strangers are invariably given a bed in the porch just outside the front That is where Telemachus is put when staying with door. Nestor and with Menelaus (y 395-406, b 296-307) Odysseus with Alcinous (rj 228-347), and when he is a stranger in his
;
own house
for
(v 1)
Priam with
Achilles
'
(fl
up sons and daughters have separate
halls
643-50). Grownor thalamoi built

'
them close by (y 413, /3 2-5). When Hector goes to find Paris in his thalamos (Z 321 ff.), he finds Paris cleaning his armour, and Helen with her handmaids spinning, all in the
same room and the room is certainly the place where Helen and Paris slept. When the gods are summoned to Hephaestus' house, they stand in the porch and see from there his bed with chains like spider-webs drawn round it (0 304, 325).
;
And
Alcinous speaks of the night being long time to sleep in the hall (A 373).
'
'
;
it is
not yet
the normal Homeric practice. But there are other passages where the master and mistress have a separate bedroom away from the hall Penelope, in particular, and certain
That
is
young
girls
dwell in
'
well- wrought
upper-chambers
'.
And
here, as before, the poet
who
brings in the later use does

'
not notice that he
is
and Menelaus go to
c
contradicting an earlier use. So Helen in the inward rest in the usual way
'
; '
but in the morning Helen comes out part of the lofty hall of her fragrant high-roofed bower (6 304, 310, 121). In the case where Achilles puts the aged Priam to sleep in the porch,
the later poet seems to be troubled at such apparent lack of hospitality, and invents a reason, which no commentator has
ever succeeded in understanding, for not asking him to sleep properly inside (& 643-76). Apparently he did not under-
stand the custom which he found implied in his book. Other evidence could be added to this l evidence from the
:
Cases of conscious avoidance by Homer of 'modern' subjects are given by Breal, Pour mieux connaUre Homere, pp. 7-11: e.g. writing, statues, paintings, money.
1
154

; ;
vi
from the law treatment of the gods, a most curious subject from land tenure, governabout guardianship of a widow
ment, and, most important of
all,
from the changes and misAll are involved in a
understandings of linguistic forms.
network of
-small but ever- thickening difficulties as longfas
try to regard the poems as the work of one man or one All begin to clear and become intelligible as soon as age.
we we
i
recognize
what the Poems
really are.
They represent not
'
tradition of
the independent invention of one man, but the ever-moving many generations of men. They are wholes built
of a great
mass of legendary poetry, re-treated and successive poets in successive ages, the histories by knitted together and made more interesting to an audience
up out
re-created
by the
instinctive processes of fiction. Since the above was first written this body of evidence has been traversed by Mr. Andrew Lang in Homer and His Age. Mr. Lang shows all his usual skill of fence, and makes many valuable contributions to know-
NOTE.
sum up
If I may ledge, notably in his illustrations of old Algonquin armour. his line of argument, it amounts to something like this: (1) No
positive demonstration can be made that different parts of Homer were written at different dates ; (2) as to armour, dowries, &c., Homer lived in a middle age between the old and the new therefore he could refer to both
:
customs
*
indifferently.
above, Mr. Lang
to the special cases of contradiction pointed out takes different lines in different cases. The proverb
As
iron of itself draws a

of the case. )
'
man on
The
up most
is an interpolation. (This seems like giving cases where Paris and Hector swerve aside from a
'
'
spear that has been driven heavily through their breastplates he meets by suggesting that the thorex in question was soft and very baggy, like a Minoan cope '. The use of 8â in the wrong sense he does not explain, but sug*
The evidence from the house he thinks stronger gests possible alternatives. than the rest, but not conclusive. In cases where we think we see a contradiction,
If there
we should remember that we ourselves are likely to be mistaken. were on general grounds a great antecedent improbability in the
thing
Iliad being a traditional book, instead of its being much the most likely or if the fact that Homeric scholars sometimes contradict themselves ;
had any direct bearing on the question, then I should feel Mr. Lang's criticisms to have considerable force. As things are, I think
or each other
they only amount to some successful sniping at outposts. My discussion of the Armour is based chiefly on Beichel, Homerische Waffen, Leaf's Appendices to his edition of the Iliad, and Robert's Studien zur Ilias. I agree most nearly with the last named. The passages about funeral customs, Bronze and Iron, Temples and Dowries I take chiefly
'
'
from Cauer's very useful Grundfragen der Homerkritik, and Helbig's Horn Epos aus den Denkmiilern those about Houses from Noack's Homerische PalCiste, with some criticisms such as Mackenzie's in J. H. S. xxiv.
;
VII

III.
PECULIARITIES
was trying in my fourth lecture to draw a general comparison between the Hebrew traditional history and the Greek epic as regards their manner of growth, an objection may have occurred to some of my hearers. The objects compared are too unlike. The Book of Genesis or of Judges
I
is
WHILE
essentially a chronicle, a prose record of traditional history, narrated as far as possible in order of time, year after year, generation after generation. The Iliad is a definite poem,
composed with great
artistic elaboration for
beginning in the middle of the action,
a skilfully prepared climax. Its of conscientious pillar-to-post chronicle, but of artistic fiction.
an artistic end, and leading up to methods are the methods not
The time
main action amounts to some four days. 1 This is true and before going further we should try to realize how the difference has come about. Both books, I believe, are made from the same raw material, but they
of its
;
have developed
it in different ways. In the simplest form of the saga there were probably elements of both prose and poetry poetry where you happened to find it, in lyrics or
We find that style of ballads, and prose to fill in the facts. composition in the Book of Judges and some Icelandic sagas. But Hebrew poetry, as it developed afterwards, is too imI
patient and emotional to narrate history.

like
And
in a
book
Judges poetry has been conquered by prose. The saga has been developed, to the best of the writer's power, into
a systematic prose history, chronologically arranged and edited with a view to religious instruction. In the Greek
1
More exactly, four days
of fighting followed
by twenty-two
of funeral.
156

had things
its
vn
own way.
saga, on the other hand, poetry
Greek poetry developed special forms for

the deeds of the past.
versified chronicle
telling continuously
And it told them as it pleased. The became more and more of a poem and less but it had in it from the of a history. It meant no harm first a dangerous and unprincipled element, the poet's sense of beauty, which in that particular soil grew and grew, and
;
overpowered in numberless elusive ways the honest

chronicle.
spirit of
The
Chansons de Gestes
early French epics were mostly known by the name of that is, Songs made from Res Gestae or
:
The Latin chronicle of Res Gestae gave the Chronicles. the poet made them up into an epic. A great deal of facts Greek epic must have been made up on a similar principle. Suppose, for instance, that some early editor of the Book of Judges had been not a scribe or priest, but a Homeric
:
bard or rhapsode,
how might he have
treated his material
Our Book
Judges
of
or Heroes
Judges consists mainly of the exploits of four who delivered Israel from oppression
:
slew Eglon, King of Moab Barak, of the northern tribe of Naphtali, who defeated Sisera, the
Ehud
of
Benjamin, who
King of Hazor, and whose story contains the Gideon of Abiezer in Manasseh, Deborah splendid song and Jephthah of Gilead, who overthrew the Midianites who smote Ammon and sacrificed his daughter. There is added to these an account of Samson, who did not exactly dejiver his people, and was rather a strong man of folk-lore than a judge and an Appendix on the sins and destruction
general of Jabin,
of
; ;
{ '
;
Benjamin. There are also brief mentions of seven other Judges who are little more than names. This raw material is worked up into an appearance of continuous
of the tribe of
.
history with fixed, religious moral.
though
fictitious,
dates and a special
Now what
He
1
would, we
If
would a Homeric bard have done with it ? may suppose, select a hero and a centre for his
rightly,
remember
make
a Latin epic out of the
the old scholar Joshua Barnes did actually Book of Judges.
vii
JUDGES
'
AS A
lie
GREEK EPIC
:
157
poem.
The choice would
between three heroes
Gideon,
who has
three chapters devoted to him, besides a long account

;
Jephthah, who has two chapters and a fine tragic story and Samson, who has four chapters. Now my instinct tells me that he would not choose Samson
of the doings of his son
;
:
and to choose Jephthah would lead at once to a human

It follows that he sacrifice in the front plane of the story. would probably choose Gideon. Then he would consider how to draw into his poem as much as possible of the rest <f the book. He certainly must not lose the Song of Deborah, ror instance. Looking through the record, he would find that kt a certain point (vi. 34f .) Gideon blew a trumpet and Abiezer was gathered together after him. And he sent messengers and unto Asher and unto Zebulun throughout all Manasseh and they came up to meet him.' There and unto Naphtali is an opening. When the herald went to Naphtali, we should
'
. . .
he spoke to the men of Naphtali, and the men of Naphtali wavered, and did not wish to join the war. They feasted and bade their minstrel sing to them. And an old
be
told,
Greek saga he would be a blind minstrel his harp and sang the Song of Deborah, how Jabin the Syrian had oppressed Israel how Barak awoke and led his captivity captive how Deborah arose, a mother in Israel how the river Kishon swept them away,
minstrel
in
came and smote
the ancient river, the river Kishon.

tali
So the princes
of
Naph-
were reminded of the great deeds of their forefathers and
came in their strength to fight for Gideon. All the Song of Deborah will come straight in. The story of Ehud, again it is easy to get that told by some Benjamite. Then the great story of Jephthah must
;
not be omitted.
It only needs a little boldness. of Gilead,
When
the
embassy comes to the men
we
shall
be
told, their
aged chieftain, Jephthah, is bowed with grief and cannot join Gideon himself, because he is not yet purified from the slaying of his daughter. He or another Gileadite tells
the story, and he sends his followers with a blessing. The only real difficulty lies in the dates. Very unfortunately,
158

later
vn
If
Jephthah seems to have been

chronology
is
than Gideon.
the
firmly established, our bard will
have to bring
in a prophet
But if the foretell Jephthah' s story. not beyond dispute, or if our poet feels that, chronology be the facts as they may, the poem will be much the better
is
who can
for the change,
he
will ignore the dates
and
let
the
Muse have
her way.
And Samson
Either
we will
leave
Well, one of two things must be done. Samson entirely aside, to be celebrated in
or, if
separate lays of his own,

history too,
we must cover
we may have some
that piece of character like Nestor in the
Cypria and Iliad, like Menelaus in the Odyssey, who can make a digression and tell the whole story. Gideon's father, Joash, might do, or his armour-bearer, Purah. Joash can regret that
men
are not
and was
as they once were, when he was young entertained at Zorah by Samson Samson, son of
:
now
Manoah, who ... Or he can warn some young man to be prudent, lest he should fall like Samson, who And for the rest of the Judges, I believe that a Greek bard, such as the authors of the Cypria, would have got them all The wise Joash would denounce the weakness of the in.
. .
how unlike to Shamgar, the son of Anath, who smote with an ox-goad six hundred Philistines Or a great speech refusing to bow down to Baal, would Gideon, in
present race of men,
!
explain that nothing would induce him to do so, not all the riches of Jair the Gileadite, who gave to his thirty sons thirty cities and set them to ride upon thirty asses not all the still
:
vaster wealth of
Abdon
the son of Hillel.
And
so on.
a characteristic of the Hellenic races, in contrast with
/AsHebrew,
the
artistic
this tendency to work up tradition into an and poetical form is of great significance. And it does add one more to the already numerous forces which turn all legendary history away from the path of truth. 1
If
you take up the

1
Iliad as a record of history,

Cf.
you
will
soon
note on
p. 170,
below.
vii
FICTION
it
AND TRADITION
'
159
'
!
put read
down, exclaiming, Why,

as fiction,
this is fiction
But
if
you
it
feeling that it is
every page be pulled up by the not free fiction. The poet does not invent
you
will at
whatever he
real events
likes.
He
believes himself to be dealing with
and real people, to be recording and explaining that have value only, or primarily, because they are things supposed to be true. And again, when you come to the passages that do not represent real tradition but merely
serve to join or to introduce parts that originally did not belong together, you will inevitably be struck by the extreme
invention.
reluctance of the Homeric poets to trust long to their own It is one of the things that most irritates an
ordinary modern reader in the analysis of the Iliad or Odyssey, how the later poets or editors, those for a or 0, for example, will go to any lengths responsible
to be forced to observe
up centos of old lines, taken from the most varyIt was not the rather than invent new lines. ing places, business of a bard to invent. It was his business to know,
in patching
by information from the Muses or elsewhere, the history of the past, and to tell it to his new audience accurately, word Even in the case for word, as the Muses had told it to him. of new songs, which naturally had their attraction, the poet's praise is that he knows them and tells them accurately. each detail vividly and Well, o-cu/xSs- e/caora Accurately ? so that you feel it must come straight from the Muses. clearly, which he puts into it is merely something jThe imagination
* ' ;
that he cannot help. I suspect that the element of conscious fiction comes in
first
of all in the
formulae of transition and introduction.
The
writer of Z, for instance,
makes Glaucus
tell
to
Diomedes
during a battle the whole story of Bellerophon. That is merely his way of getting the history of Bellerophon told. He does mean that the story is true but he does
;
not in the least
mean
to assert that Glaucus actually told it

It
on such an occasion.
take as history,
business to unravel in the Iliad
would probably be a very complicated what the reader is meant to and what is merely the device of the poet for
160

effect.
vii
convenience in narrative or for dramatic
And
fancy that the instinct of most readers will generally lead them The important thing is that there right without any rules.
are real masses of supposed historical truth, somehow connected
together, and beautified as they pass, by the processes of fiction. The wiiole basis is not fiction, but traditional history. A
lies, I think, in the general agreement as to statements of important fact between all our different sources of tradition; the wide range of epic or quasi-epic
clear proof of this
poems ascribed to Homer, Hesiod, Stesichorus, and others, and even, where we can get them, the local legends attached The differences between these to temples and oracles. various sources are of course large and numerous but the
;
underlying consensus of statement quite unmistakable. And its significance can only be minimized by adopting a theory
which was universally prevalent a few decades ago, but which in our present knowledge can only be described as
desperately improbable.
really in Greece
According to this theory, there

:
is
no traditional history at all the Iliad and Odyssey are two primaeval works of fiction, preserved as it were by miracle from pre-historic times and all the other epic tradition is made up out of these two books by the deductions, imitations, and inventions of ingenious commen;
tators.
In some cases this process has no doubt occurred. In others it may have occurred. For instance, there existed in the sixth century a tradition of a marriage between Telemachus
and the youngest daughter of Nestor, Polycaste. Now, in the Odyssey, when Telemachus goes to Nestor's house, Polycaste is put in charge of him and, after the custom of the age, Did the poet of the Odyssey know the gives him a bath. Did he perhaps know people who claimed descent tradition ? from Telemachus and Polycaste? Or, on the other hand,
at all when he one daughter by name, and put Telemachus in her charge, and is the supposed tradition a mere embroidery worked up from that accidental mention ? In that case
did the poet of the Odyssey
mean nothing
mentioned
this
viz
THE BELLEROPHON STORY

But in the great mass
of a real saga
of cases
161
I hesitate to decide.
hesitate.
one cannot
behind any particular treatment of it forces itself upon almost every reader. As a matter of fact, the Iliad and Odyssey not only refer to other
that legends as already existing and treated by other poets one admits 1 but they often in their digressions tell every
; ;
The existence
stories in
allusion.
a form which clearly suggests recapitulation or They imply the existence elsewhere of a completer
Take, for instance, poetical treatment of the same subject. the story of Bellerophon in Iliad Z. The queen, Anteia, her
love being
rejected,
falsely
accuses
Bellerophon
to
her
husband.
(Z 165.)
So she spoke, and fury seized the king for the thing he heard. he had aidos of that Slay him he would not in his heart. But he would send him to Lycia, and gave to him grisly signs, which he wrote inside a folded tablet, many life-destroying things, and bade him show them to his wife's father, that he might perish. And he went to Lycia under the blameless guiding of the gods. And w hen he came to Lycia and the flowing Xanthus, the king of broad Lycia honoured him with open heart for nine days he feasted him, and nine oxen he slew. But when the tenth rosy-fingered dawn appeared, then he questioned him and asked to see the sign that he brought with him from Proitos his son-in-law. Then, when he had received the evil sign, first he bade Bellerophon Now she was of slay the raging Chimaera (She-goat). birth divine, and not of men in front a lion, behind a serpent, and in the midst a She-goat, breathing out a fearful force of burning fire. And her he slew, follow:
ing the signs of the gods.
So on and so on.
king of
Bellerophon surmounts
all his trials
the
Lycia repents and gives him his daughter in marriage. He seems to be on the point of living happily ever after.
But when he also was hated of all the gods, then verily along the Plain of Wandering alone he wandered, eating his own heart, avoiding the footfall of man.
What
does
it all
mean
Is that the
way
to
tell
new
Monro, Odyssey, Appendix, p. 294.
162

'
'
vn
story unknown to your hearers ? One wants more explanation all through. What blameless guiding of the gods led
What signs of the gods showed Bellerophon to Lycia ? him how to slay the Chimaera? 1 Above all, how did he
' '
become
'
hated of
'
all
the gods
',
'
and go wandering
And
why the phrase when he also ? Is it not plain that the poet of Z is in the first place referring to an existing legend,
and secondly, one may almost say, quoting from an existing poem ? And what can that poem have been ? Bellerophon was a Corinthian hero. So that when we find that there did exist an ancient mass of poetry vaguely called Corinthiaca', and attributed to one Eumelus of Corinth, which is on general
c
grounds the obvious source for any Corinthian traditions, we naturally conjecture that this is probably the source of
our particular digression. Let us follow this conjecture further.
Shortly before this there comes in the Iliad (Z 130 ff.) Bellerophon passage
'
another digression, telling how Lycurgus, King of Thrace, came to an evil end because he fought with the gods in
'
resisting Dionysus,
troubles
and the gods hated him. The passage commentators because Homer usually ignores Dionysus. As Dr. Leaf says, Dionysus is an absolute to the Homeric pantheon.' If we look into the stranger
c
scholia
we
find that the story of
Lycurgus
resisting the
'
god
Dionysus was The Europia,
told or
'
by Eumelus
of Corinth in the
Verses about Europa ', parts of the Corinthiaca or general Corinthian traditions which dealt with Europa. The same source which we sus-
Europia'. are presumably the
pected for Bellerophon! Evidently Homer if we may so name the poet of Z since he was using the Europia for the story of Bellerophon, took the Dionysus-Lycurgus story
from them at the same time.

of Bellerophon also being
1
And he
hated of
all
speaks, you remember, the gods. That also

:
ri)v
he occurs Hes. Theog. 325 and is mythologically very ancient. (The Chimaera, a savage monster in remote lands, is obviously less incredible than the tame Pegasus in a stable in Corinth.)
Pegasus
is
omitted by
teal
Homer
as a monster
ptv Urfyaffos d\(
ivOkbs B(\\po<f>6vTrj$,
vii
THE OORINTHIACA
it
CROSS QUOTATION
in a list of
163
has no meaning where

following
stands in the Iliad.
in the original Bellerophon
came
Apparently such people,
Lycurgus was hated of the gods Bellerophon also was hated of the gods, and went mad. It is all clear. If anything were needed to make it clearer still, it would be that the Verses of Eumelus
upon Lycurgus.
*
:
and went blind
'
are quoted as the earliest authority for the story of the Argo and Medea, and the composer of our Odyssey speaks of the Argo as a subject of which all minds are full '. There has been an extraordinary reluctance among scholars to look facts like these in the face, or to admit the possibility Homer ', as the phrase is, borrowing from the supposed of The truth, later author Eumelus ', or even from Hesiod '.
'
' ' '
as
we have already
seen, is that these various
books or masses
for
of tradition in verse
form were growing up side by side
Either could quote or be quoted by the other as as the Book of Judges could refer to Samuel or Samuel easily Both these books, if we are to believe the most to Judges.
centuries.
careful Biblical scholars,
had begun
to exist
by 900
B.C.
but Judges was only finished a little before B.C. 200, and Samuel not quite finished then. Or, to take a much stronger
^concrete instance, to show
how complicated
this
process
Isaiah chap, xxxvi-xxxix is of mutual quotation may be. quite full of quotations, sometimes complete, sometimes (Driver, L. 0. T. abridged, from the Second Book of Kings.
p. 227).
On the other hand, the Second Book of Kings quotes not merely Isaiah but the much later writer, Jeremiah and quotes him not directly but by way of Deuteronomy.
;
takes from Deuteronomy passages which Deuhas already taken from Jeremiah. (Ib. p. 203.) teronomy I All the great books were growing up together, and passages
That
is,
it
f could be repeated from any one to any other. These facts should guard us against two possible misconceptions. They show that the Iliad is not an independent i work of fiction, but a Traditional Book, dependent on a living
1
*
saga or tradition. stood for history.
It
was meant to be
history, or
it is
what then
An<H|||jdly, that ^^K n M2
not alone
among
164
vn
imitators, but one
such books, a great original copied by a few late and obscure among a great number, each embodying
the traditions specially prominent in their
own
circles
of
influence,
and
all of
them
freely
overlapping and intercom-
municating as the enterprise of a bard or the interest of his audience suggested.

I
have jotted in the margin of
my Iliad notes
of the prob-
able sources of the various bits of legend

to the
main story
of
which seem foreign the Iliad or alien to their immediate

or
context.
Many
as
'
of
them have been in ancient times

' ' '
modern
marked
a phrase which spurious or as interpolated seems often merely to mean that the critic wishes a line were
not there when
it
:
plainly
is.
One
finds in the first
few
first, the Catalogue of ships, belonging to some Boeotian source, the school of genealogies originally and catalogues. This was known even in antiquity. The
books of the Iliad
the wiiole passage was 'Boeotia', and it is omitted in many MSS. 1 But we can see that there was an ancient
title of
intermediate source before the Catalogue came into the Iliad. The tenses of the verbs and other points of language show
that the heroes are described, not as already disembarked And at Troy, but as in the act of assembling at Aulis.
we happen
to
know
that there was an old chronicle

of the ships
poem
which both contained a catalogue
and also narrated
at length the assembling of the fleet at Aulis the so-called Cypria or Cyprian Verses. Our Catalogue has in all prob-
been taken from there. Similarly, a passage in 370-400 about Tydeus doings in Thebes is abbreviated from the Theban epic chronicle. We hear of it, or different
ability
parts of
it,
Epigoni.
injuries
In the
under the names of Thebaid, Oedipodea, and fifth book (E 385 ff.) there is a list of the
done to gods by men, which seems to be taken from some Heraclea, or epic about Heracles. This is probable
is
in itself, but
made almost
certain
by a curious coincidence.
Herodotus,
A
1
sixth-century poet, Panyassis, the uncle of
In D, T, C7, and pap. B, among the best ones (Leaf). great collation, cites an even longer list.
Mr. Allen, in his
vii
SOURCES OF THE ILIAD'

'
165
worked
Iliad,
happen and presumably adapted from the same passage. (See Leaf on E 392.) In the sixth book we have the large and beautiful passages already spoken of, derived from the Other passages seem to be derived from the Corinthiaca.
Cypria, the Little Iliad, and the Sack of Ilion, the so-called Aethiopis, the Argonautica, the Battles of the Gods and Titans,
over the Heraclean epics into a new form, and we to possess a few lines of his very similar to these in the
the Naupactia or Aetolian verses, and a rather obscure set Heracleiae '. of poems about Pylos, apparently These,
'
then, are all pieces of supposed history taken over from one
traditional epic into another.
On
r
the other hand there are books, and very fine books,
w hich seem
is I,
The most brilliant to be pure original fiction. the embassy to Achilles and his rejection of all narrating
what look
There
Phoenix.
overtures, though even here there are fragments of

like real tradition, for instance, the story of
is
also K, describing a midnight raid
by Odysseus and Dio-
medes, in which they catch a Trojan spy with a fictitious name Dolon, Crafty and through him succeed in killing Rhesus,
chief of the Thracians.
This looks like a piece of fiction

:
made up out
two separate traditional sources a tradition of the slaying of Rhesus by Diomedes, presumably in Thrace, 1 and another about the midnight expedition of Odysseus and Diomedes into Troy to carry off the Palladium. 2 Of course that is only conjecture. But it serves to illustrate the kind
of
of material that
we
are dealing with in the Iliad.
In its actual working up, however, our Iliad has reached a further stage of development than the ordinary run of The imaginary -poetic chronicles, if I may use the term.
epicizing of the
1
Book
of
Judges which we discussed some
See below, Lecture VIII, pp. 188 f. The Townley Scholia have of course occupies a peculiar position. " a very ancient note They say that this rhapsody was drawn up by itself" (idiq rfraxOai) by Homer, and is not part of the Iliad, but was
2
'
put into the poem by Pisistratus.'
The language
of the Iliad.
of
is
also in
many
ways divergent from that of the rest note to K, and Monro, H. G. p. 234.
It
is
See Leaf's Introductory a brilliantly written book.
166

y
vn
but in
time ago would land us not in a poem like the Iliad, one like the Cypria or the Corinthiaca in one of those authorless chronicle-poems of which we hear so much in Greek
literature,
and know,
at first hand, so
little.
It
was
their
fate, first, to be superseded by the Iliad and Odyssey, and then, in a later age, to be strung -together in what was called an Epic Cycle by some scholar or historian. Here again
' '
a stage nearer to the raw material. And, curiously enough, there is one quite late poet who, partly by conscious archaism and partly from the peculiar childthe Odyssey shows
itself
like
nature of his genius, has returned to a type of epic chronicle
earlier
than either the Iliad or the Odyssey.
mean
the
Alexandrian poet of the Argonaut legend, Apollonius Rhodius. Let us consider this point more closely. What is the
Ilias is
'
meaning of the name Iliad) in Greek fj an adjective meaning about Ilion '.
' '
:
'IXtay
TTO'TJO-IS ?
Poesis
means
denotes the process of verse- writing first, is, .' making verses, and secondly, the result of the process, la mass of verse-writing. Not, you will observe, a thing quite
that
it
'
poetry', not a poem '. The name 'IA.ias TTOTJO-IS, then, means the poetry about Troy '. That is the traditional name, and it is generally felt to be
so definite as a Poema.
It is
c
'
pretty satisfactory.
But how does the
Iliad itself begin
Does
it
begin, for instance,
I sing of Ilion and Dardania of the swift horses, for whose sake the Danaans, servants of Ares, suffered many
'
things
sort of beginning for an Ilias the lines did, as a matter of fact, form the Poesis. the poem which beginning of one of the old chronicle epics afterwards supported a mutilated and obscure existence under
That would be the natural
And
the
name
of the Little Iliad.

:
Our
Iliad begins with quite a different appeal
Wrath, son, the wrath accursed which laid many pains upon the Achaeans.
Goddess, of
Peleus'
1
Sing of the
Ps.
Hdt. Vita Homeri,

*l\iov
dci'Soj
16:
Km
Aapbai'irjv fv-n&\ov
dQov Aavaoi 0pdirovTf
vii
'
ILIAD
'
AND MENLS
'
'
167
professes to tell the story of a fatal quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, which took place in the tenth
is, it
That
year of the war, and lasted for a very few days. Nay, it does not tell even the whole of the Wrath quite exhaustively.
might have included the capture of the two causes of it, the maidens of Bresa and of Chryse. The poet appeals to the Muse to sing of the Wrath, beginning there where first
It
'
was strife and sundering between Agamemnon King of men, and divine Achilles '. Now, we can understand this language. It is the phrase /of a bard selecting for purposes of recitation some special
there
.
episode out of a longer history. It is the same in the opening of the Odyssey From somewhere amid those tales, Muse,
'
:
begin to us
also.'
It is the
same with the bards who are spoken
of in the Odyssey.
called upon the god and made minwhere the Greeks had gone upon their benched ships, and were sailing the sea, but Odysseus and his comrades lay hidden in the market of the Trojans
strelsy, beginning
(0 500).
And Demodocus
That
is
is
how
the Phaeacian bard
is
described
and
most.
his lay
seems to have lasted for a few hundred

as
lines at
That
as people will willingly endure to listen to. The poet proposes to select out of a mass of legend the particular episode of the Wrath, an episode just large enough to make
much
a good
'
Lay
'.
The
incidents of the
Wrath
are these
Agamemnon,
pro-
voked by the free-speaking of Achilles, puts a dishonour upon him. Achilles withdraws from the war. Agamemnon The Greek fights without him and is defeated by the Trojans.
ships are in danger.
implored to save them. He still will not fight himself, but sends his bosom friend, Patroclus. Patroclus is killed by Hector. Achilles, furious
Achilles
is
with remorse, joins in the battle himself, slays Hector, and The subject, as here gives Patroclus a splendid funeral.
announced,
Ilion
;
is
it is
not Ilion as a whole, not even the last war of merely a four-days' incident in the tenth year of
168
the war.

And yet the poem is
'.
vn
'
called 'lAtas nolens, the
poetry
about Ilion
And
in the first
not unsuitably. For no sooner has the poet explained book the origin of the Wrath than he leaves that
subject, and, roughly speaking, does not return to it until the eleventh book. He goes back in the second to a catalogue
of all the
Troy
it
after nine years of fighting,
Greek host, describing the fleet, not as it was in but as it was in Aulis before
started for Troy. After the catalogue come various battles, including a duel or ordeal by combat between the two principals
in the international quarrel, Paris
and Menelaus battles which are rather curious as they now stand, but fall into place
:
at once
if
you
realize that
they properly belong to the very

ordeal
beginning of the war.

I
The
by
battle
owing to some Trojan's treachery sat down to a ten years' conflict.

in
it failed,
was tried first and the two nations

:
Then follow further battles

:
an obscure duel between two other heroes l in E a whole brilliant poem about Diomedes, which not only upsets
the balance of the
exploits,
in itself
poem by completely dwarfing all the both past and future, of Achilles, but also shows a definite connexion with another context. Next,
a fine stretch of poetry in Z, which tells of Troy from the inside, and treats Hector as a sympathetic hero, not a hated enemy. Every line of it is noble but how is it introduced ?
:
How is Hector brought into Troy ?

battle,
is
when Diomedes
is
In the thick of a desperate slaughtering the Trojans and Hector
the only man at all capable of resisting him, Hector leaves the field to take a message, not in the least of a confidential nature, to his mother, and to converse with his wife
!
touching on all these points very lightly. The proof of each one depends for its validity on detailed and accurate examination of the words of the poem. I am using them
I
am
'
merely to indicate the sort of process by which the short Lay of the Wrath of Achilles has been made into the great or, to put the case from a different Poetry about Troy
'
:
Very
Aias was
likely pointing, as Bethe suggests, to a form of the legend in which the chief hero. There are many traces of such a form.
viz
THE
of view,
'ILIAD'
AN EXPANDED LAY
169
heroic
point
how
the most diverse traditions of
some with Achilles present and some without him, some exalting him as the greatest of all the Greeks and some ignoring his existence, have been joined together and made
fighting,
fairly consistent
by
this ingenious device of the

fiction.
'
Wrath
'.
cannot think that the Wrath was mere

convenience.
It
was an
its
old traditional motive.

fictional
But it was chosen, I suspect, for The Wrath motive enables you
to
include the great deeds of various other chieftains without damage to Achilles. One after another can be the greatest of the Greeks while he is away from the field. 1 If another
is
of all warriors,
expressly asserted to be the best, or swiftest, or handsomest, even that statement can be retained by the
addition of an inorganic line, like
T&V
or
a\\(*)v
Aarawr
jxer' lLp.vfJi.ova
UÂc'tawa,
o(pp* 'A^tXci)? p.rivii>'

1
6 yap TroAi cêpraros ytv

',
of all the Greeks, else, after the blameless son of Peleus
or
For he was the strongest far.' The composer, as a matter of fact, has reached out on every side and collected the most diverse masses of heroic tradition
to insert
while Achilles was in wrath.
between the joints
of his
Wrath-Lay.
The
|
result of this process is that the Iliad is really a
Lay
which has utterly outgrown its natural boundaries. It proMesses to be a Lay, but is so no longer. There are other
instances of this kind of growth in Greek literature. Homeric Hymns give themselves out to be Preludes
is,
The
that
mere addresses to a god, preparatory to beginning a real poem; the sort of prelude that Dernodocus used, when he began from a god '. But these preludes have grown in interest and beauty and length, till now the first five of them run to some hundreds of lines apiece. They have become,
'
1 See Mulder, Homer und die Altionische Elegie, pp. 19 ff. Studien zur Ilias. Cf. N 321 ff., B 673 f., 768 f., H 111
if.,
Also Wecklein, 226 ff., con-
T 227, 229 Z 98 ff. H 289. These last are perhaps the only passages where a superlative is applied to another hero without the addition of some qualifying clause about Achilles.
trasted with
;
;
170
vii
not Preludes to a Lay, but complete Lays in themselves. Again, the Victory Songs performed by Pindar's choruses
but one of them is generally contain less than fifty lines over four hundred lines, bursting all its natural bounds. That
;
particular lyric, the Fourth Pythian, was composed to be a great gift and peace-offering laid at the feet of the King
of Gyrene by an exiled noble. It was to be a gift such as no other noble had ever given, no king ever received.
But now comes a difficulty. Every work of art that was ever created was intended in some way to be used. No no ship built where there picture was painted for blind men was no water. What was to be the use of the Iliad ? What audience would listen to the recitation of such a poem ? It contains over fifteen thousand verses. It would occupy
;
twenty to twenty-four hours of steady declamation. No audience could endure it, no bard could perform it, in one And it is specially constructed so as not to fall stretch.
apart into lengths. It is all one at least, as far as its comA single lay could be recited at posers could make it so. one sitting. A chronicle poem, falling easily apart into
separate stories, could be recited evening after evening in
several sittings.
The Cypria, from what we know

;
of
them,
would
so would apart excellently into separate episodes It has the a good deal of the Odyssey. plots of many in it ', as Aristotle has observed, and as we have tragedies
fall
'
noticed before.
But the Iliad has been deliberately elaborated

of
on a plan which puts it out of use for ordinary purposes Yet recited it must certainly have been. 1 recitation.
The
Iliad
late Professor Paley
difficulty that he actually
was came
so
much impressed by
this
to the conclusion that the
was a poem composed for reading, not for recitation, and that consequently it was not an early epic at all, but a learned poem composed in Athens at some time between Euripides and Plato, when there existed a reading public.
1
Cf. Breal,
1.
on the
Iliad.
c. pp. 43 ff., who lays stress on the influence of Public Games His general conclusion agrees almost exactly with mine.
vii
THE PANATHENAIC RECITATION
171
Such a solution is, of course, opposed to almost all that we know of early Greek literature. But the difficulty is a real one. Now, as it happens, when we first meet the Iliad and
Odyssey in clear history
we
find
them publicly
recited
upon
an occasion which exactly meets most of our requirements. They were recited not by one bard, but by relays of bards,
in fixed order at the Panathenaea, the greatest of all the
festivals of Athens, recurring
once in four years and lasting
The recitation was established about the end several days. of the sixth century, and formed one step in a movement
on the part of Athens to establish herself as head and motherSo much seems historically clear. city of all the lonians.
It matters little that, in attributing the institution of this
recitation to a definite founder, our authorities
waver between
three almost contemporaneous names, Solon, Pisistratus, Hipparchus. Whichever it was, the main fact remains the same.
General considerations
favour of the tyrants.
tell
somewhat against Solon and

in ancient life than
in
These festivals meant
much more
any
corresponding ceremony at the present day. At the back of them there was a living religious effort there was the ancient
;
warmth
towards a city which formed for each man his one earthly protector and his intimate home, and which, for a further claim upon emotion, was never for
of patriotic feeling
long quite out of mortal danger. The Panathenaea in especial formed the great occasion for the gathering of all Ionian cities under the wing of the great Metropolis ', their champion
'
and leader against the barbarian.

is
'
may suggest to us a question. What, after all, the meaning of the name Panathenaea ? Who are the Not the for whom the feast is made ? All-Athenaioi
This fact
* ' ' ;
Athenians themselves
'
that would give no meaning to the The answer occurs immediately. Who can the AllAthenians be but the very people whom Athens was then shepherding, and whose universal character was that they
Pan
'
'.
'
were
sprung from Athens ? Twelve cities in especial called themselves lonians, and had their great meeting at
all
'
'
172
vii
the feast of the Panionia at Cape Mycale. But they were not more Ionian than many other cities, says Herodotus In reality all are lonians who are sprung from Athens and
:
'
keep the Apaturia

observes,
of
'
an Athenian
festival
(i.
147).
*
Only, he
them, and especially the Athenians (143), many avoid the name, and do not wish to be called lonians '. was more honourable, at the name Athenaioi Exactly
c '
;
any rate in Athenian judgements it was also wider in range. For it included those various cities that did not belong to
;
the Ionian Twelve, but admitted that they were sprung from Athens '.* The informal league of which Athens was
chief, at
'
the Ionian race was of lowest account, and had no city of weight, except only Athens (Hdt. i. 143), could have chosen no better name than All- Athenians when
' ' '
a time when
it
at the
gathered for its great festival every fourth year, exactly same time w hen the great Dorian gatherings met for
r
the Pythian games at Delphi. And, to return to the Iliad,
what
after all is the essential
story of the Iliad ? Is it not the story of the battle of Allthe Greeks against the barbarian of Asia ? All-Greeks
' '
:
wonderful word rings out again arid again in the poems
though
it
comes
chiefly in later parts,

?
tion of the Epic style
It is
what and against the tradia modern formation, markedly

because
'
out of tone
'
forcing
itself in just
it
so exactly ex'
which the older language had no presses the meaning word. not Panachaioi,' you will say, or Panhellenes Paniones '. True, Homer uses generally the older and more
for
; ' '
dignified term,
Achaioi,' to denote the whole race

'
whom
the Italians called
Graeci
'
',
the Asiatics
'
laones
',
the Greeks
'
themselves in later days Hellenes '. The lonians knew this, and even claimed themselves to be not only lones and Athenaioi ', but also Achaioi '. To justify the claim they brought their founders from Achaia. In later times, at any
'
'
they had the legend that, while coming ultimately from Athens, their ancestors had gone quite out of their way and
rate,
1
The theory that the lonians were
all
sprung from Athens had
riot, of
course,
much
historical foundation.
vii
MEANING OF PANATHENAIOI
'
'
173
stayed for
a time in the
little district of
was
called
lenes,
by that name (Hdt. i. Panachaioi, and at last Panathenaioi
the Peloponnese which 1 145). Paniones, Panhel;
there
is
the
same conception behind all these names, only some minor differences of time or of local centre. It is a union of men of
Hellenic civilization against the multitudes of eastern bar-
barism.
In many ways the Pisistratean Panathenaea form exactly the occasion for which the final form of the Iliad might have been composed. But not in all. The Iliad was not comI
F
posed for any king or tyrant. There is no court atmosphere about it. No flattery of a particular clan no denunciation of the enemies of a particular clan. It is splendidly panhellenic.
;
families,
appeal is not to any given set of noble the brave men of Greek legend. And the Athenian colouring, though visible enough on the surface of
If it is aristocratic, its
but to
all
the poems,
is
even in | poem,
not a thing that goes deep. The body of the its latest parts, is clearly Ionian the ultimate
;
nucleus something else, something older and more northern. Behind the recorded Panathenaic recitation there must lie /
centuries of unrecorded recitation at various great Ionian Pisistratus, or whoever he was, must have taken gatherings. over to Athens an institution already existing in Ionia. One
thinks
first of
Twelve
Cities
the Panionia, the great gathering feast of the at Cape Mycale. That is the obvious cor-
relative to the
Panathenaea.
And
there
is
some confirma-
tory evidence. It has been remarked long since that, among the Homeric gods, there stand out three who are never jeered at or made ridiculous two of them really grand figures,
;
Poseidon and Apollo;
the third, at least a
very ancient
and formidable, though not a sympathetic, person, Pallas Athena, who is especially prominent in the very latest additions to the Odyssey. Athena was the patroness of Athens, 'oseidon and Apollo were the two patron gods of the
Panionia at Cape Mycale. Or one might think of the great four-yearly festival at
1
On
this point cf
Wilamowitz, Die lonische Wanderung and Panionion.
174

'
vn
Delos, at which the

4 *
Homeric hymn to Apollo was sung by
the blind minstrel of craggy Chios to a gathering of all the long-robed lonians '. The gods would suit almost equally
well. 1
About this festival there is a curious passage in Thucydides (iii. 104). In narrating how the Athenians in 426 B. c. purified the island of Delos, he mentions that
'
'
had purified it before, though not completely. He had moved only those pollutions that were in sight of Apollo's
Pisistratus
temple.
He continues his narrative of the doings of 426 And the Four -yearly festival was then celebrated by
the
Athenians for the first time since (or, after) the purification. There used to be in quite ancient days a gathering of the lonians and the neighbouring islanders to Delos. They came to the games with their wives and children, as the lonians still go to the festival at Ephesus. There was a gymnastic contest and a contest of minstrels, and the various cities sent dances to the gods.
If only one could be sure of the particular reference of Does he only mean that this Thucydides' crowded adverbs was the first time that the Athenians celebrated the feast,
!
and that they did so after their own purification of Delos ? Or does he mean, as the order of the words suggests, that
the Athenians in 426 celebrated the feast for the
since the cleansing of the island
first
time
by
Pisistratus
If so,
much
Pisis-
would become
clear.
We
could suppose that,

'
when
tratus cleansed the island

e
and made the old
fair or gathering-
place sacred and untreadable (aârou), the Delia naturally came to an end, and the contest of minstrels was transferred
to the
new festival of the Panathenaea at Athens. Of course there were other Ionian festivals. One might
think of Chalcis, where, according to a pleasant fifth-century fiction, Homer himself was defeated by Hesiod in a contest
at certain funeral
games
of a king, the poet of
war being
set
below the wiser poet of peace. It is noteworthy, however, that the Old Oligarch who wrote the treatise on the Constitution of Athens did not know of any great political union
of lonians (Rep. Ath.
1
ii.
2).
arise
It
may
be that during the
Questions would
about Leto and Artemis.
vii
IONIC FESTIVALS
175
Lydian dangers, when Croesus (560-546 B. c.) was sweeping with war all the Ionian coast, but could not yet cross the sea, Athens took over the national festival from Delos or Mycale, just as she afterwards took over the federal treasure from Delos. It may be, again, that there were great gatherings
of bards at the divers four-yearly festivals all over the
seas, at Chalcis,
Ionian
elsewhere
Ephesus, Miletus, Chios, los, Smyrna, and and that Pisistratus merely added to the list of
such places one other, which happened in the course of history to obliterate all the rest. r 11
Some public gathering earlier than the Panathenaea, but otherwise very like the Panathenaea,1 that is the kind of occasion for which I can best conceive our vast Ilias Poesis
having been put together, to be recited as one whole. There is in the Iliad much of the spirit of these great Ionian festivals,
where men gathered from their various but kindred cities in one act to worship their common gods and to make holiday, to feel their union of race as lones or Hellenes or Achaioi,
and to encourage one another in the age-long war against the barbarian. One feels in the Iliad the high tension and lift a public occasion, which insists on a tone of a great occasion and correctness in the poems, banishing all that of dignity
is
furtive or unseemly, all that could move derision in strangers or hurt the feelings of other Ionian states inevitably, at the same time, somewhat blighting that profounder and more
;
intimate venturesomeness of poetry which cannot quite utter itself before a crowd. There is war somewhere in the atmo-
but it is war far war present, menacing or

sphere;
;
off,
seen through a medium, not
There is prosperity in the world in general there is sadness, of course, but only the inevitable sadness of thoughtful men, no rage or bitterness, no arraignment of the gods. There is a spirit of joy, the
horrible.
natural high spirits of the festival reinforced by that solemn religious joy to fail in which would be an offence against the
The French Epic, Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne was composed for the Fair at St. Denys known as L'Endit: a much less august occasion, of course. The Poland seems to have been a court epic.
1
176
vn
god, and which keeps the poems up to their extraordinary standard of brave living, suppressing all notes of horror or ghastliness, and holding in much restraint even the inevitable
entrance of tragedy. There is the pride of race, the broadness of patriotism, the friendship to all Greeks, which beseems a sacred truce and a gathering of many clans.
What
r
a difference, after
all,
there
!
is
between the Greek
The general process at and the Hebrew traditional book w ork was much the same in both, but a great divergence must have begun early. The Hebrew reviser, except where jreligious motives came into play, tampered so little with his He took his raw material just as it was, and copied text. it out, merely inserting his introductory and connecting formulae, smoothing out contradictions, and correcting the orthodoxy of his authorities where they needed it. A Homeric
scholar cannot but be surprised at the extreme ease with which interpolations in the Hebrew writings often betray
They are made quite undisguisedly, with no and sometimes no regard for grammar. 1 No Greek editor ever dreams of doing liis business like that. For every Son of Homer was himself a poet, and kept modifying and
themselves.
artifice
working up into poetry everything that he touched. Consider the ultimate purpose to which the literature was
destined in either case, and most of the differences in form
and
spirit will follow.
The Hebrew
:
scriptures became, to use

'
the rather strange technical term, books that defile the That is, they were holy after touching them you hands.' must wash your hands before touching any mundane thing.
For instance, the older phrase the Ark was expanded by later editors the Ark of the Covenant ', or the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh '. Now an elementary rule of Hebrew grammar is that a noun in the construct case (i.e. in our terminology, followed by another noun in the Yet these pious correctors did genitive) cannot have the definite article. not venture to delete the article before Ark '. They prefer to leave the
1
'
'
into
'
utterly
J
ungrammatical phrase
JV^Sin
[V")Nn
(Josh.
iii.
14)
or
(ib.
17)
njiT
JVn
Hebrew
Lectures.
the general comparison of the Greek and the }VtKn. I need hardly refer my readers to Prof. Butcher's Harvard
On
vii
GREEK AND HEBREW
177
They were kept sacred and apart. Their purpose was to be read aloud accurately letter by letter in the synagogue for the instruction of the people. If a member of the audience
more shame to him. No one dreamed of blame to the writings. imputing any But the Greek traditions from the very outset were made into Lays to be recited by bards for the delectation of the camp or the hall. If men were not interested, it was the fault of the bard and his poems. And in the very earliest times of Greece we meet with that characteristic and only half praiseworthy Greek institution, the public competitive recitation. The poems became in the Greek phrase, 67rtwas not
interested,
The bards who knew the tradicame to recite at the great games and gatherings. Each recited his own poems i. e. those that he possessed ', not necessarily those that he had composed and tried to make them more attractive than other people's. He was bound,
beiKTiKd, things of display.
tions
'
not to violate history too grossly not to be ^cvfiifc, or false-speaking ', above all not to be ignorant. But he might, by the help of the Muses, tell his audience a great
of course,
'
more about the heroes than by any human means he He could work up the known incidents likely to know. till became more and more moving, more edifying or they more pleasing. An element was thus admitted which leavened the whole lump, an element which, in the hands of a less wonderfully gifted people, must, one would think, have led to bombast and vulgarity, but which was somehow stopped when it had done its maximum of good and was only just well started on its career of evil I mean that strange mixed passion known to all artists, which consists, at its higher end,
deal
was
in the pure love of beautiful or noble creation, and, at its
lower end, in conscious strain for the admiration of an

\
audience.
VIII
THE HISTORICAL CONTENT OF THE ILIAD AND THE BIRTH OF HOMER

EARLY
disaster
peoples used sometimes to record a great deed or by planting on the spot a pillar or a branchless tree,
land carving on the surface some legend of the things done. In the case of the Homeric Epos, one might play with the
fancy that they had planted a tree full of life, which had put forth new branches and grown till the letters upon the
Then worshippers hung garlands and ornaments upon the boughs, and planted
illegible.
trunk were riven apart and made

it
about
flowering creepers brought from

first
many
different soils
and climates, so that the
trunk was almost hidden and
the letters themselves long ago obliterated. Till at last people forgot the original purpose of the graven trunk, and proceeded to worship it, not as a record of great events, but
for irrelevant qualities of
beauty and majesty and immemorial
age.
?
I want in this lecture to attempt the deciphering of some fragments of the legend thus inscribed on the original trunk but I must admit at once that the results will be disappointing.
:
We can no longer work in the naive spirit of Schliemann,

after his
who,
Troy
triumphant discoveries of the great ruined cities at and Mycenae, proceeded to identify the graves and
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and remark upon the irregularities of the former's burial. In most traditional poems there are three fairly distinct
bodies of
elements.
There are masses
of uiere fiction, that
is,
stories
/
J
and personages deliberately invented by the poet out of his head. There are, secondly, the shapes of myth and folklore, which the poet narrates in good faith, as he received them,
with at least a modicum of belief in their
reality.
And,
viii
FICTION, MYTH, HISTORY
179
thirdly, there are fragments of definite history. There the whole Niebelungenlied, for instance.
is
Take the
story characters, the Niblungs and Odin and apparently Sigurd himself, belong to the region of myth. Again, we have historical persons in Atli, who is the Hunnish King Attila, and Dieterich of Berne, who is the real Theodoric.
woven on
lines of
romantic
fiction.
web of the But many of the
In
Homer we may make
the same sort of division.
There
is, good deal of mere fiction. The whole framework into which the incidents are fitted, the wanderings of Telemachus in the Odyssey, the Embassy to
in the first place, a
Achilles in Iliad
poets.
On
evidently mere inventions of the the other hand, such beings as Zeus, Hephaestus,
I,
are
Bellerophon, Typhoeus, the Chimaera, clearly belong to the realm of myth. And, thirdly, the excavations have proved
As
the historical reality of the great towns of Troy and Mycenae. to the persons, it is a different matter. If there are any
and Theodorics hidden among the various gods and no independent historical document by which to identify them. Now as to the fictional parts of Homer, I do not wish to dwell upon the value of fiction as indirect history. One
Attilas
tribal heroes, there is unfortunately
if it
might point out that fiction, to adapt a phrase of Aristotle's, does not tell you what did take place on a given occasion,
constantly shows you what might well take place. And even where the main subject of the fiction is romantic or marvellous, the background or setting in which it is placed is
instance,
very likely to be drawn from normal life. The Cyclops, for is a fictitious monster but his processes of dairy;
farming are real and historical. And that kind of information is sometimes what helps us most toward the understanding of a far-off state of society. If the Iliad and Odyssey were all fiction we should still learn from them a great deal
*
about early Greek customs, about practices of war and of government, about marriage, land-tenure, worship, farming,
Let commerce, and, above all, the methods of seafaring. any one read thoughtfully the story which Eumaeus the
180

tells of his life in
vm
swineherd
Odyssey
o,
and then consider how
history of the life of the Aegean, about the seventh century B. c., he has learnt from three pages of poetical fiction.
much
This study of the history implied in fiction might be quite a fruitful subject. But I wish at present to deal with a
different
historical
Is it possible to extract any original from the various Homeric traditions, and meaning reach, as it were, the nucleus of true fact round which this vast nebula of legend is floating ? I believe that great advance
question.
is
attainable in this direction
and that
it
may
be attained
diffi-
very soon.
culties.
But
at present the subject presents great
For one thing, the metaphor which we have just used is not really accurate. There is not a nucleus of fact in the midst of a nebula of fiction or fancy. There are many nuclei and many nebulae. And often it is not the truth but the fiction which forms the real centre. The imperious desire
for telling a story or
then drawn into the orbit of
ment
worse
of
making a poem has come first, and has its revolution any chance fraghistory that happened to be floating near. And,
;
still for our present purposes, the various nuclei have not remained separate in their own systems they have attracted and repelled one another, have collided and broken
up and re-formed, so that what once was

nebulous.
flesh
solid is now utterly Atli in the Niebelungenlied is not a whit more
Or, to take
and blood than the cloud-spirits who surround him. an instance from another cycle of legend, the
persecution of the Albigenses

fact enough.
by the Dominicans was a brute became entangled with the Arthur and Sangraal legends. And when we meet it in the High History of the Holy Grail it has lost its hold on time and place, and become rather mistier and more unreal than most of its sur-
But
it
roundings.
Now,
1
first, let
us take a character of pure fiction. 2

;
Many
Sebastian Evans's theory as given in his introduction to the High History of the Holy Grail. 2 For the following, cf. E. Bethe, Homer und die Heldensage, from Neve
vin
CHARACTERS OF FICTION
:
181
might be cited
TepTriadrjy,
many
of the
the herald 'HTrvrddrj?, the bard 4>?^tos Phaeacians in 11 ff. and the Nereids
in
2 39
ff.,
perhaps,
is Briseis,
with their transparent names. The most striking, the maiden who is taken by Agamemnon
from Achilles, and thus becomes the passive heroine of the Wrath. She has no father or mother no history apart from as before the one incident for which she is invented a real name. For Koure Briseis mentioned, she has not even Maiden of Brisa V the Aeolic form of Bresa, only means
:
'
a town in Lemnos, taken war.

in It is
by
Achilles in the course of the

like other characters
worth noticing, indeed, that,

Briseis eventually
good
fiction,
legendary life, Middle Ages, under the

accusative
the
6
and even
'
rose to
some importance
acquired independent in the

(Cressida
is
name
of Cressida.
the
Briseida
slightly
corrupted, and confused with
name
of the other maiden, Chrysei's.)
But in the Iliad Briseis is a shadow, a figment of the poet. Contrast her, for instance, with a real saga-heroine, Helen. Helen appears in the Troy legend, but was certainly not
it. She dominates other legends as well. She has a definite personal existence. We know her parents and her home. She is a daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, or of Zeus and Leda. She has her w ell-known temple at Amyclae
created for
in
Lacedaemon, and sometimes appeared there in historical times to answer the prayers of her votaries. At Therapnae, too, worship was paid to Helen and Menelaus, ov\ w? rjpaxriv not as heroes but as gods a\\* CMS 0ots djuLôrepots ovcrtr,
'
'
\
(Isocr. x. 72).
Passing from Briseis, the character of fiction, which can He is typically yield us no history, let us turn to Achilles.
and almost without qualification a pure tribal hero. Apart from the psychological working up of his character
F. Dummler, Heldor, Anhang ii to Klass. Alt. 1902; Studniczka's Kyrene, 1890. I have not seen Bethe's M'irchen, Mythus und
Jahrbucher
Sage.
1
Wilamowitz, Homerische Unters.,
p.
409
and
for Bresa, see
K. Turn pel,
Lesbiaka, p, 106.
182
in the last

books of the
Iliad, there is
vm
almost nothing in the
The Achaian Hellenes of Achilles legend but tribal history. South Thessaly did all that Achilles did. They left their
home on
the mainland
:
they stayed
first
at Skyros,
till
they
were grown strong they conquered and occupied Lesbos. They fought on the Thracian coast. They eventually went through the Hellespont and Bosphorus up to the Black Sea, and made settlements which bore the name of Achilles in But there is something to be learned from studylater ages. the various places where Achilles was worshipped. The ing worship in Thessaly was, we are told, ordered from Dodona (Philostr. Heroicus, p. 741, quoting an interesting hymn
to Thetis).
of
Dodona
This agrees well with Achilles' prayer to Zeus It is natural enough, too, that he (IT 233).
should be worshipped at Sigeum, at Skyros, at Mytilene, in the island of Leuce, and that inscriptions should be found at
Olbia and Odessos calling him Pontarches, Lord of the PonBut he had worship in other parts of Greece too. tus.
'
3
worshipped in Laconia, says the scholiast to ApolPausanias saw a great lonius (iv. 815), citing Anaxagoras. Achilleion, or shrine to Achilles, on the road from Sparta to
Arcadia.
He was
There was worship at Brasiai

;
in Elis
in the
island of Astypalaea probably in Cos, since the Aeacidae in had a shrine there. And in Tarentum there were general shrines both to the Aeacidae in general
and to
Achilles.
not destroy our conception of Achilles as a special tribal hero ? No it only serves to of cardinal importance for the understanding illustrate a point
does this
?
What
mean
Does
it
of prehistoric Greece, the
extreme mobility and the frequent

'
It is the natural result of scattering of the various tribes. that time when all Hellas was cbaoraros, driven from its
home
constant war-paths and uprootings There were fragments of tribes cast away in the most diverse parts, and where they were strong enough they carried their tribal gods with them. The Achaioi, who
;
'
the time of the

'.
'
of peoples
settled in the Peloponnese
naturally took with
and migrated again beyond them the worship of Achilles.
it,
vni
If
TRIBAL HEROES
ACHILLES
183
any one would have a conception of the way in which and races can be scattered, when in a mobile condition of life, I recommend him to look at some map of the linguistic stocks of the North American Indians 1 If the Iroquoian or Siouan or, still more, if the Athapascan- speaking races had
tribes
.
been in the habit of building shrines to their tribal heroes,

in
what extraordinarily diverse parts

!
of the vast continent
should find the heroa

pletely dwarf
And
the Iroquoians would have
we made
him too. The result would comany strangeness which we may at first feel in the scattering of the shrines of Achilles from Tarentum to
the Algonquins worship
Odessos.
'
He
in Thessaly, of
remains the tribal hero of his particular people whom we can only say in Homer's words that
called
is
Myrmidones were they
and Hellenes and Achaioi
'.
The case
to
of
Agamemnon
more complicated.
That he
is
He seems little doubt. have belonged to some Achaean tribe which enjoyed at some period a recognized authority over various others, and which also stood in close relation to Zeus. But whereas
a tribal hero or divinity admits of
Achilles has in the traditions a fixed
home and
a most simple
ancestry, being descended straight from the local mountain Pelion and the sea that washes it, Agamemnon's home is
hard to make out, and his ancestry bristles with difficulties. He has in the Iliad a special relation to Zeus apparently one of a rather official sort, owing to his royal position. He
;
is
a sovereign among men as Zeus among gods. At Sparta the relation was so close that we find him worshipped under
title of
the
Zeus- Agamemnon.
This reminds one of the altar

it is
of Zeus-Pelops at
Olympia, but
hard to be sure in either

It is
case of the
meaning
of the conjoint worship.
common
enough to find the cult of the invading Northern Zeus, simply 2 And that superimposed on that of an old aboriginal hero.
1
e.g. filisee
remote
parallel, the
Reclus, Geogr. Univ. America, ii. p. 40 f. Or, to take a less Germanic tribe called Eruli are first mentioned in the
*
third century A.D., at which time they appear almost simultaneously Black Sea and the frontier of Gaul '. Chadwick, Othin, p. 33.
2
on the
Prolegomena,
p.
321
f.,
333
f.,
&c.,
and note on Lecture
II, p. 46.
184

if
vm
would seem the natural explanation here,
Pelops and Aga-
memnon had in other respects the look of aboriginals. But Agamemnon is a most typical Achaean. He is fair-haired, he has no roots in the soil. He a conqueror, a great ruler
;
is
even murdered at last by the native princess ClytemShe had been the nestra, daughter of Tyndareus and Leda.
wife of Tantalus, but
Agamemnon
slew Tantalus and married
her against her will. And Pelops, too, is always represented as coming from foreign lands to the Peloponnese, and marrying
the daughter of the native prince Oenomaus.
of his being the grandfather of
I say nothing
It looks as
Agamemnon, because that

if
may genealogy the Pelops tribe was the

itself
be merely tribal history.

first
to establish itself in the Pelo-
was Phrygian, and had come apparently from somewhere over the sea and that it was followed and superseded by the Agamemnon tribe, which then claimed the hegemony of the Achaeans, and either identified or closely
ponnese
;
it
connected
Achaeans.
its
tribal
all
But
that
god with the sovran god is mere conjecture.
of
all
the
not surprised after this to find some difficulty in determining Agamemnon's home. In the Iliad he is the head
is
One
of the chief
in gold.
It
Peloponnesian empire, the lord of Mycenae, rich need not surprise us that the actual name of
Mycenae occurs but seldom in this connexion. We have seen before that Mycenae was probably not so important a place as its ruins would make us suppose. Agamemnon's kingdom in the Catalogue covers Corinth and Sikyon, and he generally
refers to his
home
as Argos.
This seems satisfactory, but
fresh difficulties occur immediately.

is
the realm of Diomedes.
And
Argos proper, in Homer, the word Argos itself has in
Homer
at least three meanings. It is the Argos of Thessaly, the Argos of the Peloponnese, and it is also a general name
EAAa8a o-v for Greece, especially when combined with Hellas Kal ptcrov "Apyos. And it has long been observed by
scholars that in
seems to be in Thessaly.
some passages the Argos of Agamemnon Presumably the tribe which Aga-
memnon
represents passed in the course of its wanderings
vin
AGAMEMNON: THERSITES
185
a long time in Thessaly before it sailed Agamemnon was a great lord of ships to its eventual home in the Peloponnese.
In the Peloponnese
Agamemnon was
the typical Great King,
would seem, with the seat of effective In Homer we hear of Mycenae and Corinth outpower. side Homer we hear by far the most of Sparta. Agamemnon is simply King of Sparta to Stesichorus (39) and Simonides He died in the Spartan town of Amyclae, according to (20). Pindar (Pyih. xi. 32), and it was there that Pausanias saw
and
his seat changed, it
his
tomb.
It is in Sparta, too, that

1
we hear
of the
god Zeus-
Agamemnon.
To turn
Iliad
particular enemies
to another type, let us consider one of Achilles' to wit, Thersites. Every reader of the
;
remembers
rails at
his brief
and
where he
in the
Agamemnon
inglorious appearance in B, with unseemly words, and is
thrashed with a
staff
by Odysseus.
He was
the ugliest
man
Greek army, bald, and hump-backed, with one leg and then longer than the other. Let us remember that notice wjiat^ Odysseus threatens to do with him. He will
;
strip
him naked and drive him away from the company

(ayoprjOev) witfiNalpws.
of
men
Does
it
not remind one at once
pharmakos or scapegoat, the ugliest man in the community, who was made into a sin-offering and driven out from
of the
? But let us look further. The name Thersites has all the appearance of a fiction. It is derived from Thersos, the Aeolic form of Odpo-os, courAnd the poet of B evidently meant age or impudence '.
the city
'
'
the
name
to
have
this latter
is
meaning.
It is rather
a surprise
to find that Thersites
really
an independent saga-figure
with a
distinguished relations. He the savage Aetolian king, and first Agrios, cousin once removed of the great Diomedes. His mother was Dia, a palpable goddess. Returning to Homer, we find that Thersites was (B 220) to two of the Greeks especially most
life
of his
of
own and very
was a son
'
hateful,
Odysseus and Achilles

1
'.
Odysseus' enmity needs no

p. 128.
See note on Lecture V,
186

:
vra
further explanation Odysseus beat him. But why should Achilles be his enemy ? Because Achilles, in the ordinary
story, killed him.
It
happened
in this
way.
When
r
Achilles
was fighting with Penthesilea the Amazon, and had given her a mortal wound, he was suddenly struck w ith remorse and love as he looked upon her dying face. Thersites saw
this and grossly jeered, so Achilles very properly slew him, some say by a spear- thrust, others, by a heroic box on the He was purified for this manslaughter by Odysseus. ear.
Diomedes, however, Thersites' kinsman, took up a feud against

Achilles in consequence. 1
given in the old chronicle writer Pherekydes (fr. 82) and the poet Euphorion (fr. 131). Thersites took part in the hunt of the Calydonian boar, and, for showing
is
Another story
cowardice, was thrown by his cousin Meleager over a rock. (He is made to recover, much injured, in order to be slain
by Achilles.) Throwing from a rock, it may be remembered, was one of the regular modes of getting rid of a pharmakos. The evidence so jar points towards some connexion with
a
human
sacrifice of the
pharmakos type, that
is,
a purgative
special
?
sacrifice to cleanse the
connexion with Achilles.
community Can we take

;
also to
it
some
a step further
Professor Usener, the author of that illuminating book, 2 TherGotternamen, points out a more strange coincidence.
sites is
found as a name elsewhere in Greece and derivatives same stem are common, Thersias, Therson, and the like. Now in the Lacedaemonian 3 dialect this word w ould probably take the form Theritas, Qrjpiras as Ilepo-eôVeta becomes in Laconian, FfypeôVeia. And Theritas in Lacedaemon is a god
:
of the
ctonos.
So the Aithiopis followed by Chairemon's tragedy, Achilles ThersitoHence Apollodorus, &c. The feud of Diomedes in Lycophr. 999,
:
Schol. Soph. Phil. 445, Dictys Cret. iv. 3. Smyrn. i. 767 This late Latin book goes back to ancient sources. An earlier Greek version of Dictys has lately been discovered, dating probably from the second century A.D. Tebtunis Papyri. 2 Der Stoff des gr. Epos, in Sitzungsber. Wiener Akad., phil.-hist. Kl. 1898,
Tzetz., Quint.
;
p. 47.
3
In
strict
Spartan
^rjpiras.
if
&rjpiras
is
dialect of the Perioikoi,
Meister
would be the Doricised Achaian right. See his Dorcr and Achcier, pp. 24 ff.
'
'
vm
THERSITES: AIAS
187
Pausanias saw his temple of between Amyclae and Therapnae. Pausanias says that he was the same as Ares Hesychius, perhaps more accurately,
;
whom we know something.
says he was Enyalios another war-god. or mother called Thero.
He had
a nurse
Now
died
the old sacrifice of the
human
r
scapegoat had in Sparta

there are
down
to a curious form, to
w hich, however,
many parallels elsewhere. It became an annual fight in a plane grove between two bodies of Ephebi, or Spartan youths.
The They fought with no weapons; only fists and feet. plane grove was surrounded by a moat, and they threw the
defeated,
if
they could manage
it,
into the water
another
regular
way
of disposing of the pharmakos. 1
And
before this
annual battle the Ephebi performed a sacrifice to Enyalios at a place called the Phoibeion, and a sacrifice to Achilles at his temple on the road to Arcadia (Paus.
20. 8
;
iii.
19.
is
20.
battle of Ephebi, 14.

tells
Hesychius
us
we
and
Theritas, as Enyalios have here the ritual form of the old

8).
If
battle of Achilles
Thersites.
What
that battle in
its
primitive religious significance really was lies beyond our Usener thinks of the common annual rites of the scope.
slaying of Winter another.
by Summer,
or of one vegetation
god by
He has Different, again, is a hero like Telamonian Aias. no tribe, no home, no belongings. Only a shield which no
one
'
else
The lines connecting Shield-strap.' of Salamis are of the latest description.
can bear, and a father whose name is Telamon, 2 him with the island
But he has another
1 In the Thersites- Penthesilea story in Dictys, Diomedes has Penthesilea thrown, still living, into the water. 3 It has been suggested by P. Girard, Rev. des Etudes Grecqucs, xviii. (1905), pp. 1-75, that TtAa^d^ ('Supporter'), as the father of Aias, is This is good in originally not a shield-strap, but a door-post or pillar.
point of religion, and would suit excellently with the conception of the Aiante as twins; and an inscription (fifth cent.) from the Argive Heraeum uses T\a{jiwv as --= pillar '. It is also a Roman use Telamones ', like
' '
Caryatides '. See Herwerden, Lex. Supplet. Aias is obviously a shield-hero.
To
the writers of the Hi id
188

Himself an immense
vm
fabulously
characteristic.
man and
strong, he constantly goes about with a companion, as brave as himself but small. The two together are called ' Aiante ',
*
the two Aiases.'
The name
of
the other varies

;
he
is
sometimes Aias's own half-brother, Teukros is Aias the Less, a Locrian and son of Oileus.
require, of course, separate study.
sometimes he
These persons
One
of
them
at least,
Teukros, seems to be a real saga-figure. But, like the more shadowy son of Oileus, he has been pressed into service as
the Great Aias's lesser twin.
lore,
The Aiante
are figures of folk-
and no doubt
of primitive worship, parallel to the other
sets of divine twins, the Tyndaridae, the Aphareidae, the
Dioscuri, the Anake, the Leucopolo, the Aktorione Molione. It is worth noticing that Fick considers this twin-worship as
characteristic of the Leleges
:
Salamis and Locris are both

Oileus
is
Lelegian centres. Lelegian language.
And
the
name
referred to the
Take again the case of Diomedes. He seems to be a tribal god or hero,, connected perhaps first with Aetolia and the Aetolian settlements on the north coast of the Peloponnese, though in the Catalogue he belongs to Argos and Epidaurus. Originally perhaps an Achaean, he has been affected by the wild Aetolian tribes, who came from Illyria and expelled the
Achaeans, reducing Aetolia in historical times to savagery. His kinsman is Agrios ', Savage '. His father Tydeus would
c
'
have been made immortal, owing to

his
his many merits, had not own tribal war-goddess, Athena, seen him eating an enemy's
battle-field,
head on the
die.
and
be,
after that preferred to let
him
However that may
we
find in
Greek tradition two
ostensibly distinct persons bearing the name of Diomedes. There is this hero, mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey, the
Epigoni and the Alkmaeonis, by birth an Argive, but a traveller He is a fierce and fiery to Aetolia, Troy, Italy, and Cyprus. with horses, but decidedly, young warrior, much associated
if
may borrow
'
a convenient phrase from the language of
the theatre,
sympathetic.'
That
is
to say,
we
are
wont to
viii
DIOMEDES
side,
189
be on his
another
'
not on that of his enemies.

'
But there
is
also
;
unsympathetic
Diomedes, a ruffian and a savage
a son of the Thracian war-god Ares, and king of Abdera This Diomedes, who fed his fierce white horses in Thrace.
an evident trace of human sacrifices was suitably destroyed by Heracles, and his horses taken away. Now, as Eric Bethe has pointed out, these two heroes are
with
human
flesh
evidently the same.
Diomedes you
the Thracian.
find
As soon as you scratch the Argive under his Hellenic surface the mark of
In the most diverse localities
we
find
him
connected with the same horses and the same uncanny sacriIn Cyprus to the far south-east he was worshipped fices.
with
human
victims.
To the
horses.
far north-west the Venetians
sacrificed to
him white
In the Iliad Diomedes has

is left
been cleared of his cannibal tendencies, and
one of
the most attractive figures in the poem, peculiarly brave and modest and wise in counsel. Yet incidentally we are con-
In K he stantly coming across his Thracian connexions. the King of the Thracians, Rhesus, and carries off his slays
famous white horses. In E also, I would suggest, he fights Ares and routs the god of the Thracian aborigines, Ares But we find that, flies to heaven, leaving no horses behind. just before, Diomedes has fought Aeneas and his mother Aphrodite, and carried off Aeneas' s matchless horses. Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite, and Aphrodite is the goddess belonging to Ares. Originally, it would seem, a war-goddess and wife
:
of the war-god, she
mythology, and emerges
has passed through the crucibles of Greek identified with a half -oriental love-
goddess, a creature who has no business in battles, and is merely the paramour of the warrior god (see Schol. on 4> 416).
Also her son in this case has Anchises for his father, not Ares. This probably is the result of mythological changes
false identifications. One suspects that originally the hero conquered by Diomedes, and robbed of his horses, and immediately afterwards succoured by both Aphrodite and
and
Ares,
in
was a true son
E becomes an
of Ares. Thus the story of Diomedes exact parallel to that of Diomedes the
190
vm
Thraeian tyrant. For, in the processes of ancient mythology, to conquer a son of the Thraeian Ares and despoil him of
his matchless horses is exactly the same thing as to be a son of the Thraeian Ares who is so conquered and despoiled. In
the one story Diomedes has the passive part, in the other the active. It is like Dionysus the Bull-Slayer, and Dionysus the slain bull
wolves.
of saga and tribal which have taken shape in the heroes of the Iliad. history Of course we may admit freely the possibility that in any particular hero there may be traces of a real individual. The legends of the Middle Ages are full of historical names. And
;
Apollo the wolf, and Apollo the averter of
So many and various are the elements
the names Paris or Hector or even

'
Agamemnon may have
belonged originally to as definite a person as those of Charlemagne or Virgil the magician', Attila or Dieterich of Berne.
Professor
of a great
Bury has remarked that the name and personality foeman are apt to remain fixed in a nation's
nineteenth-century England been still in the saga-making stage, she would certainly have mingled Boney with her ancestral demi-gods. But, if any of the persons are
memory.
Had
'
'
historical,
real, it
we cannot
identify them.
And
if
the names are
does not follow that any part of the story really happened to the bearer of the particular name. None of the
mediaeval magician-stories happened to the real Vergil.
But
let
historical
us turn to somewhat surer ground. Consider the background of a case like the following. There is
a fine passage of some seventy lines in Iliad E 627-98 which narrates the slaying of Tlepolemus of Rhodes, a son of
Heracles,
by the Lycian Sarpedon.

nowhere
else
The passage
interrupts
the context.
cleidae are
It is never referred to afterwards.
The Hera-
mentioned in Homer.
And for divers
reasons editors have marked the passage as a foreign inserBut where does the insertion come from ? The Heration.
cleid of
Rhodes has no place
in the
When
one sees that his adversary
Trojan circle of legends. is a Lycian, that is, a
vni
HISTORY
SARPEDON AND TLEPOLEMUS
191
chieftain of ttie
mainland just opposite Rhodes, where the
Rhodians were constantly attempting to force a settlement, one can guess what has happened. A local legend of battle
its
between the Rhodian and the Lycian has been torn up from natural context and inserted into the midst of the fighting about Troy. The song is a fragment of the history of Rhodes
In searching for fragments of real history, like this, in the it is probable that our best hunting-grounds
be in the
little
and Lycia. 1
j
Homeric poems,
will
backwaters of narrative, where the plot and the details least important. That is to say, the poet will have left the history most unchanged in those places where he had the least motive to falsify it and conversely. In the case of Diomedes which we have just
interest is weakest
;
considered, for instance, the narrative

of interest.
1
is
in the front plane

if
Consequently the original story
we w ere
r
right
The Sarpedon passages generally bear the marks of being in some sense foreign matter, either invented later or transferred from a different context. For instance, the Sarpedon who was buried in the famous grave-
mound in Lycia must have been slain in Lycia, not in Troy. This was remarked in antiquity. The passage (n 668 ff.) where Sarpedon's body is carried from Troy to Lycia by Sleep and Death was considered spurious by Zenodotus, with whom Didymus agreed (Schol. ad loc.). Eustathius also (p. 1069, 29) makes the very plausible surmise that Homer, knowing of the historical grave-mound in Lycia, invented these lines in order to combine it with his own story that Sarpedon was killed at Troy. The influence exerted on the Iliad by the princes of Lycia, who derived their descent from Sarpedon and Glaucus, has long been recognized. Sarpedon, however, seems to have Thracian connexions as well as Lycian even if the latter are not entirely an invention of the said princes, who may well have identified a native ancestor of their own with the famous Sarpedon. A promontory near Ainos in Thrace was called Sarpedon cf. p. 319), and Ainos is the home of (Strabo, p. 331, fr. 52 Sarpedon in one of the Heracles legends. Ainos was an Aeolic settlement among Thracians hence Sarpedon is the blood-foe of Patroclus. His chosen
*
'
comrade, Asteropaios (M 102 f.) is a Thracian, son of the river Axios (Bethe, I c.). His other comrade, Maris, is otherwise unknown, but suggests Maron. Glaucus himself, one may observe, is guest-friend of the Thracian
Diomedes
but Glaucus
One may
is a figure with many ramifications. notice, as a further mark of something unusual, that the
Lycian genealogy given in Z 199 does not agree with the one ordinarily And Diodorus says that Sarpedon fought on given, from Europa-Minos. the side of Agamemnon against Troy (v. 79) Perhaps a mere
!
slip.
192
THE RISE OP THE GREEK EPIC
VHI
in our suggestions is hidden away under a mass of ornament and addition. Not only has the place of Diomedes' battle
with the war-god and his spouse been moved from Thrace to Troy, but the name of Aeneas has been substituted for
some other name.

with.
When
a story
is
does not need to be
made
ff.)
interesting, it is less
mere background, and tampered

following passage
:
In the same book (43
we have the
Then Idomeneus despoiled Phaestus, son of the Maeonian, even of Borus who had come from deep-soiled
Tarne. Him spear-famed Idomeneus stabbed with his long lance as he was about to mount upon his chariot, through the right shoulder. And down from the chariot he crashed and a horror of darkness laid hold on him.
Idomeneus
is
is
the
King
of Cnossos in Crete,
otherwise only
known
to history as a
and Phaestus town in the same
island.
That
is
ous hero of the town.
to say, Phaestus is the town, or the eponymSo that we have in this passage
its
a record of a local battle or conquest in Crete, torn up from surroundings and used by the poet to fill in some details
of slaughter in a great battle before Troy.
And what
sort of a conquest
was
it ?
Idomeneus,
if
we
inquire into his
antecedents, appears pretty clearly as a
He is a son of Deucalion, which a great founder of cities in the north-west, like Diomedes and Odysseus. The men he fights l Oinomaiis and Alkathoiis who is in fall into two groups
northern invader of Crete.
points to Thessaly.
He
is
some legends one
by Oinomaiis, in others a son of Pelops the slayer of Oinomaiis these two take us The to the Pelops-group of northerners in the Peloponnese. others are what we may call Creto- Asiatic Asius, from the
;
of the suitors slain
Asian plain in Lydia, this Phaestus, son of the Maeonian from Lydia, and Othryoneus, a name derived from the Cretan word
for a hill (Mpvs, see Fick-Bechtel, p. 421).
1 I omit Aeneas and Deiphobus. They are obviously not inconsistent with the above grouping, but I hesitate to offer an explanation of their meaning in this context. Orsilochos, Idomeneus' supposed son in v 260,
looks like a fiction.
vm
and
adrift
THE ANDROKTASIAI
'
'
193
Is there not history here, real history,
however fragmentary
from
all its
moorings
I think, following a hint
of Bethe's, that there is a
good deal
I
of historical fact confirst
tained in certain passages which look at

strings of meaningless
4
sight like
mere
Manslayings ', a Homeric battle picture. For instance, at the end of Diomedes' great battle we have (Z 29 ff.) this passage
:
names, mean, the avbpoKTacriai, or which constantly fill up the background of
Then
Polypoites, firm in battle, slew Astyalus,
and
Odysseus smote with his bronzen spear Pidutes of PerAnd Antilochus, cote, and Teucros godlike Aretaon. son of Nestor, smote Ablerus with his shining spear, and Agamemnon, king of men, slew Elatus. (He dwelt by the banks of fair-flowing Satnioeis, in lofty Pedasus.) And Eurypylus despoiled Melanthius. And Menelaus caught Adrastus alive.
And
so on.
There
may
be
fiction,
and the emptiest kind
of fiction,
mixed up
But,
first,
in this.
And probably most

I will take
of the history is at
present untraceable.
I
one case in detail presently.
would ask you to reflect what constituted a man's chief claim to public honour among these primitive Northern The greatest thing, perhaps, was to be Ptoliporthos, tribes.
a Sacker of Cities. 1
by the enemies
of
whom
Short of that, a hero was chiefly known he had slain. Think of Sigurd Fafnirs-
bane, Hogni Sigurdsbane, and the rest.

Heracles,
Achilles,
Think
of the stories
Diomedes.
In each case the main
groundwork is a list of the enemies whom the hero slew. In more civilized times we put on the tomb of a general a list of the victories which he won. In earlier times these victories were all represented as personal duels, man-to-man,
and were commemorated, at any rate
in times of migration,
not by inscriptions on tombs, but by paeans or verses current among the tribe. One remembers how the Myrmidons in
Iliad
X march
Cf.
back to the ships singing
their
paean
We
Aesch. Ag. 472 and Cic. Ep. ad Fam.
x. 13. 2.
194
vra
have won us great
whom
The
glory, we have slain godlike Hector, to the Trojans in their city prayed as to a god.' emotion connected with these various victories would
become dim with time, but the verses recording the bare facts would be remembered carefully by the tribal bard. Indeed their preservation would be the chief
of course generally
part of his business. And I strongly suspect that the lists of men slain by the various tribal heroes in the Iliad are, in their origin, these same tribal records, condensed into mere
lists of
names and,
of course, transferred
fiction
contexts.
In detail
may
from have entered
their original
in,
and some
in general, if we only the language rightly, I incline to believe that interpret ' ' Odysseus did slay Pidutes of Percote ', and that some
names may be pure inventions.

'
But
people claiming connexion with Agamemnon did take the town of Pedasus in the valley of the Satnioeis. This last
point, indeed,
But
let
',
we actually know from history. us follow the story of the last victim in this
'
Man-
who was taken by Menelaus alive and slaying slain by Agamemnon. He appears suddenly, with eventually no name of father or country. But his fate is told at length.
Adrastus,
ran into a tamarisk bush, broke the pole of his chariot, and flung him out upon his face. So Menelaus took him, but w ould have spared his life had not
His horses took
fright,
Agamemnon run up and

flank with his spear.
himself stabbed Adrastus in the
and where was this battle really a mere name, a fiction of the fought but for two things. Pausanias saw a place near moment, Thebes which was called Harma, Chariot and when he inquired the origin of the name, he was informed that Adrastus, the celebrated King of Sikyon, was there cast out of his chariot, which was entangled in a tamarisk bush, when he was flying from the battle at Thebes. This cannot be entirely a fabrication based on the Iliad. It is, in part at least, an independent
is
Who
this Adrastus,
He would seem
like
tradition.
And again, when Agamemnon's scribed in the Catalogue (B 572) it includes
kingdom
'
is
de-
Sikyon, where
vin
LOCALIZATION OF HEROES
'.
195
aforetime Adrastus was king

floating Adrastus
That
is,
this fatherless
and
though the poet did not know it and his slaying to be really the great Adrastus of Sikyon a real tribal victory, which, how^ fey- Jtgcrniemnon represents
seems
;
ever, did not take place at Troy.
Few
of these battles of the Iliad did.
line of research
by Eric Bethe in a brilliant essay on Die Trojanische Sagenkreise tends to establish clearly what many of us had suspected before, that much of the fighting which Homer locates at Troy, in Asia Minor, on the south-eastern shore of
indicated
the Hellespont, is really a reminiscence of old tribal wars on the mainland of Greece, notably in Thessaly, Boeotia, and the Peloponnese. Dr. Bethe's method is this. Those heroes
who have a
Iliad,
real existence in the tradition, apart
can in
many
cases be traced to their

trains of evidence
;
:
from the homes or diverse

their graves
settlements
by three
is
first,
and places
tribe's
of worship
secondly, their blood-feuds, for a

;
blood-feud
thirdly, their wives, kinsmen,
usually against a close neighbour and the like.
and
It is quite clear. of Achilles. Achilles is located in Phthia, in the country between the town firmly of Pharsalos and the Spercheios river. All his kindred are
Take the case
about him.
Pharsalos.
The temple of Thetis, his mother, is close to His father Peleus is associated with Mt. Pelion.
river Spercheios.
his blood-foes.
sister was married to the same neighbourhood we find
His
And in the Two heroes,

Dry ops and
celebrated in other contexts, but in the Iliad reduced to
mere names
for filling
up an
androktasia',
Deucalion, belong to this region. enemy Cycnus, the Swan-hero.
So does his better-known More than that, there is
quoted from the third-century historian Istros a statement which puzzles Plutarch and directly conflicts with all the
Homeric
Achilles
tradition, that Alexandros or Paris was^ slain by and Patroclus upon the banks of the Spercheios. In Homer, of course, Alexandros is a Trojan prince who
1
455, 478.
o2
196
vm
perhaps never went to Thessaly in his life, and he is not killed by Achilles, but on the contrary kills him some time after
dead. It is startling to find him fighting in Yet an inquiry into the origin of Alexandros-Paris gives him also a home in the same region as his enemy,
Patroclus
is
Thessaly.
Achilles. His close sister, who like himself has a double name, Alexandra or Cassandra, was worshipped in historical
(Of course, when the story of the Iliad over Greece, a legend was invented to account for spread the Locrians worshipping a Trojan.) The heroes with whom
times in Locris.
Paris fights in the Iliad, especially those who have no importance in the story, and are therefore not inserted for
a fictional purpose, are almost all Thessalians, such as Machaon, 1 He is killed at last by the Malian Eurypylos, Menesthios.
Philoctetes.
Andromache, the wife of Hector, comes from Thebe, a town which is described as 'TTroTrAafcfy, or in words which explain that epithet, beneath wooded Placos.' No one in antiquity knew what or where Placos was, though it was presumed to be a mountain. Was it not the mountain above that Thebe
'
which
lies
boundary
she
is
of Achilles'
between Pharsalus and Mt. Pelion, at the northern realm ? Andromache in one passage of
;
but in the saga generally if.) is made a Cilician connected not with any place in Asia, but with the north and north-west of Greece. She is the mother of
the Iliad (Z 397
Molossus, the
Molossi.
eponymous hero of a tribe in Epirus called In another legend she is the mother of Kestrinos, eponymous hero of the Epirot territory Kestrine. This seems to be the real tradition. It is then united with the Troypoems by making some one bring the Trojan queen back
to
Greece after the capture of her city. In one legend it is Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, who so brings her. In
another
it is
And what He seems to
Helenus, her brother-in-law. of Hector himself, the great defender of Troy ? belong to Boeotia. As Dummler has observed,
he was worshipped as a hero in Boeotian Thebes. And if we examine the list of people whom he kills or fights in the A 580, B 736 H 9. Cf. A 506
1
;
;
vm
ANDROMACHE: HECTOR: HELEN

of Boeotia.
197
Iliad, their cults
neighbourhood
Plataea
:
and graves and legends crowd round the Leitos (P 601) had a tomb in
:
was buried
Arkesilaos (O 329) Oresbios (E 707) lived in Hyle in Lebadeia. As for Hector's comrade, Melanippos
(O 547-83),
we know
that a hero Melanippos was, like Hector

'
Hector was a great slayer himself, worshipped in Thebes. of men ', and his victims in the Iliad make a sort of road
from Thebes upward to the bounds of Achilles' region. Dr. Bethe mentions Schedios the Phocian, whose tomb Strabo saw at Daphnus on the Euboean gulf (O 515, and again
P 306
;
Strabo, ix. 424)
at Delphi (A 301);
Autonoos, worshipped as a hero Orestes, connected in saga with Phocis

;
(E 705)
Trechos the Aetolian,
who must be
hero of Trechis (E 706). Trechis lies Spercheios on the borders of the realm of Achilles.
the eponymous at the mouth of the

Patroclus,
Hector's greatest victim, belongs to the heart of that country. Further north he slew Helenos, son of Oinops (E 707), Epei-
geus from the town of Boudeion (IT 571), and in some legends The road has led us even beyond the bloodalso Protesilaos.
foe Achilles,
mache.
'
to Thebe, the city of Hector's wife AndroIn other words,' says Bethe, Hector, or rather
up
'
the tribe which honoured Hector as their hero, migrated by this road. More accurately, the tribe gradually, in how many
centuries none can
tell, moved in a south-easterly direction, driven by a pressure which was no doubt exerted by the Aeolic tribe represented in the Epos by Achilles.'
Another group of closely united enemies
in these con-
nexions neighbour and enemy are almost interchangeable terms is to be found in Lacedaemon. If the above was the
Achilles-Hector-Alexandros group, this
/
is
the Helen group.
It consists of Helen,
ravisher of
Agamemnon, Menelaus, Alexandros the Helen, and Dei'phobus her third husband. The
tribe, it will
left
Alexandros
Since
it
seems to have
is
be seen, appears in both groups. no traces in central Greece, and

to the Peloponnese
since Alexandros
always in the legend a builder of ships,
the tribe probably
came from Thessaly
198

sea.
1
vm
by
Helen
of course lived in Sparta.

:
She was wor-
shipped as a goddess in Sparta
her grave was shown at
Therapnae, just north of Sparta. Her husband Menelaus had and at the same place, a grave and a temple at Therapnae to the statement of a late though well-informed according
:
authority,
honours.
for
both Alexandros and Derphobus received divine Perhaps in this statement Therapnae is a mistake
Also
the
6.
Amyclae, which suits the geography slightly better.

is
ii.
Amyclae
(Apollod.
home
;
of Dei'phobus in the Heracles legend

iv.
Diod.
31
Jahn, Bilderchronik,
it
p. 70)
and
in
Amyclae
also lay the sanctuary of Alexandros's sister
Alexandra-Cassandra, and beside

that of
her tomb, together with
Agamemnon.
not pursue the subject further. One may well be surprised at the tenacity with which these ancient local
I will
worships held their ground through almost the whole lifetime of Greece as a nation. The tribes which instituted them,
and through which alone they had reality, had long since passed away both from those particular neighbourhoods and
from the face
of the earth.
They were
often in flat contra-
diction with that other stream of history popularized and made canonical by the Iliad and Odyssey. Ages after people
had forgotten that Alexandros or Paris represented a tribe when all educated people knew him from their childhood as a wicked Trojan prince who was killed and buried in Troy old peasants and pietists and antibeyond the Hellespont
;
;
quaries continued to worship his grave at Therapnae in Laconia or by the river Spercheios in South Thessaly. Some-
times the two streams of legend, that of the Iliad and that of the local worship, ran on without mingling more often,
;
of course,
is
harmonizing the two. That why, for instance, Cassandra is brought from Troy by
for
Cf.
ways were invented
Agamemnon,
from
Aulis.
*
of
whom
the same
'
is
true,
except that he sailed
definitely
2
Aeneas
p.
The dialogue Theophrastus on the immortality of the Soul, by of Gaza (fifth century A.D.), cited in S. Wide, Lakonischc KuMe,
;
351
Bethe,
1.
c., p.
16.
vin
NOT WE, BUT THE GODS AND HEROES

to be buried beside
is
;
'
199
Agamemnon,
a Locrian hero
made
to
him at Therapnae why commit a sin against Cassandra,

by the Locrians worshipping
to be expiated ever afterwards
at her sanctuary.
No
precise
summing-up
of these results
is,
I believe, at
can at most suggest the sort of present practicable. 'ramework into which the eventual results of research will
probably
/
1.
fit.
We
Two
general facts seem to be clear
Apart from later accretions, the various battles of heroes which appear in the Iliad as part of the Trojan War represent / for the most part very ancient warfare among the wandering tribes of the mainland, earlier than that expansion of Greece over the Aegean which we know as the Aeolian and Ionian
colonizations.
2.
This warfare
is
connected
not with
the
names
of
men who names may perhaps

individual
tribal gods.
distinguished themselves and whose survive in some of the local prose chronicles and foundation-stories but with the names of
something in this second point that to our minds requires explanation. Professor Usener remarks that the French epics, coming comparatively late, revolve mostly round definite historical characters like Charlemagne and Roland the Niebelungenlied, belonging to a more primitive
There
is
mostly about tribal and elemental gods, with a good many historical characters such as Atli and Dieterich drawn in the Greek, more primitive still, seems to be almost
society, is
:
entirely about these divine or imaginary beings. When the Greeks in the full light of history defeated the ' It is not we who Persian, their general's comment was
:
but the gods and the heroes (Hdt. viii. 109). That seems to be the spirit. After all, that is the psychological condition which we often find in primitive peoples. Think how it pervades the Old Testament. Think of the
have done
'
this,
many stories in books who has succeeded or
of anthropology telling how a savage failed in catching his prey explains
200
that his

spirit, his
vra
orenda, his totem, has been on that par-
ticular occasion strong or
weak.
There
is
an early inscription
extant in which the people of Selinus celebrate a successful battle, in which presumably various individuals had in the
normal ways distinguished themselves. We should have mentioned their names. But the inscription of the Selinuntians runs thus
'
:
Thanks to the following gods w e

r
of Selinus
Zeus Nikator, Phobos, Heracles, Apollo, have conquered Poseidon, the Tyndaridae, Athena, Malophoros, Pasikrateia, and the others, but especially thanks to Zeus' (/. G. A. 515).
:
We know how
of
Lake
the Tyndaridae fought for Rome at the battle We Regillus, and for the Locrians against Croton. the Greeks before the battle of Salamis sent a ship
'
know how
to Aegina to fetch Aias and Telamon and the other Aeacidae ', including Peleus and Achilles, to lead them against
the Persians (Hdt.
viii. 64).
They
are doubtless included,
if
not specially meant, in Themistocles' words, attributing the The same Aeacidae had victory to 'the gods and heroes'.
been lent by Aegina to Thebes on a previous occasion, about which the less said the better. For the Thebans were defeated, Aeacidae
and all (Hdt. v. 80), and told the Aeginetans that next time they would prefer a regiment of men. Now, suppose the battle of Salamis had been fought, not in the full
Greek history, but in the misty dawn of the Epos, what sort of a story should we have had ? Would it have been all about Themistocles and Eurybiades and the Corinlight of
thians
I suspect it
would have been Aias and Telamon
and Peleus and

is
Achilles
who
defeated Xerxes.
That, at least,
the
way
in
which the
earliest epic battles
seem to have
been recorded.
sufficiently why the in their last analysis, are so largely the Homeric battles, work of tribal heroes and gods. It remains to consider
These considerations perhaps explain
another point. Why do they all refer not to any warfare that was going on at the time of their composition, but to warfare of forgotten people
under forgotten conditions in the
past
The
fact is certain.
Even
if
the analysis
made
in
viir
THE HEROES OF EPIC POEMS

be
all
201
this essay
problem.
in the
For the
wrong, there will remain just the same poems were certainly for many centuries
hands
of Ionian bards,
who
are
shown by
all
the evi-
dence to have largely added to them. Yet, with all their they never brought in any celebration of their own /immediate present. There is no mention of the Asiatic
'additions,
/ colonies, of
the great Ionian
cities, of
the later groupings of
The few exceptions to this rule are mere accidents. There is all through the poems a distinct refusal to cheapen If epic poetry by the celebration of contemporary things. other men wanted to celebrate the present, they did so in
tribes.
forms of literature.
What
shall
one say of this
Merely that there
is
no cause
/for surprise. It seems to be the normal instinct of a poet, at least of an epic poet. The earliest version of the Song of
Roland which we possess was probably composed by a Norman minstrel who took part in the conquest of England. If
he wanted to write an epic, surely he had a subject ready to hand. Yet he wrote about Roland, dead three hundred
years before, not about William the Conqueror. The fugitive Britons of Wales made no epic to tell of their conquest by the Saxons they turned to a dim- shining Arthur belonging
;
to the vaguest past.
Neither did the Saxons
who were
con-
quering them make epics about that conquest. They sang ho\v at some unknown time a legendary and mythical Beowulf had conquered a legendary Grendel.
Yet
this past of
is it ?
which epic poets make their songs, what

It is the
exactly
It is not the plain historical past.
past transformed into something ideal, something that shall be more inspiring or more significant. In the case of the
Iliad the old traditional fighting is all concentrated into one great war, and that a war for the possession of the very
land which the professed descendants of
Agamemnon and
Achilles were fighting for in historical times. Dates are misleading because these movements seem to have been so slow.
Tradition says that the Aeolian settlements in Asia began in
202
vm
in the
the eleventh century, but Aeolians were not firmly established Troad till the seventh or sixth.
It looks as
if
sisted in outline of four
the epic conception of the Tale of Troy conmain elements (1) A tradition of
:
a great city at Ilion in the Troad, and its destruction by war. (2) A reflection into the past of the long wars of the Aeolian tribes to establish themselves in Asia. (3) An
historical
tribes,
meeting of the Achilles tribes and the Agamemnon their common warfare against Asia and the occasional
The myth of Helen, the evercarried away in this story by Alexandros-Paris, prince of Troy as in other contexts she has been carried away by Theseus and Perithoiis, by Hermes, and probably by Achilles and triumphantly recovered by
friction
between them.
(4)
ravished and re-won,
who
is
her kinsfolk. 1
If
first
we now put the question, Where did these four elements come together ? we ought to receive some light upon
;
Homer.
that question which so vexed antiquity, the birthplace of the Aeolian tribes Ilion is a fixed and known place
also belong
on the whole to a
definite area.
They were driven
from South Thessaly across the North Aegean by a direct and there is the Ikos, Skyros, Lesbos bridge of islands
:
south-west extremity of the Troad immediately in front. The meeting of Achilles and Agamemnon is more conclusive still.
Achilles,
Thessalian
nexions,
though he had worship in the Peloponnese, is mostly Agamemnon, though he had Thessalian con:
is
mostly Peloponnesian
and
if
we look
for
some
great traditional meeting-place of the descendants of Agamemnon from the south, and the descendants of Achilles
from Thessaly, the It was of Lesbos.
first
also
place to suggest itself is the island about a girl of Brisa in Lesbos

' '
that the chiefs quarrelled.

1
The fourth point is hardly needed,

',
Stesichorus'
famous
to Troy, but stayed innocently in Egypt,
another form of
making out that Helen never went is not, I think, an invention, but the same ancient myth. She is carried off by Hermes
Palinode
This carrying off of the goddess by a definite god seems himself to Egypt. very old. Eur. Helen. 44 (\apajv 5c /*' 'Eôjs iv irrvxatffiv aiOtpos KT\.). See
Usener, Stoff des Epos.
vin
but
it
THE BIRTHPLACE OF HOMER
203
now
points to the same result. If the ravishment of Helen takes a new direction towards the Troad, that fits in
with a movement of Helen's Peloponnesian worshippers towards the same place. The time and place at which the
main strands
of the
framework
of the Iliad
must have come
together are fairly clear. The time is the Aeolian migration, \ the place is Lesbos or some early settlement on the shore of
Asia.
If
we take Homer
as the author of the Iliad, the area

birthplace.
known
as Aeolis
is his first
This historical argument fits exactly with the argument from language. True, the Iliad and Odyssey, as given in all our MSS., appear in an Ionic dialect. But it is beyond question that the dialect has been in
greater part of the
some way changed. The has been worked over into its poems
present Ionic from some other speech.
What
that speech
exactly was is open to dispute. Professor Fick, in his epoch-making editions of the two poems, argued boldly that it was ordinary Lesbian Aeolic,
and that both poems had been definitely translated into Ionic by the rhapsode Kynaithos of Chios about the year 540 B. c. He showed that the poems were full of Aeolic forms in the midst of the Ionic, and these Aeolic forms had
'
'
the peculiarity, nearly always, of being metrically different the poems from the corresponding Ionic forms. That is
:
were wrought over into Ionic simply word for word, and when the proper Ionic word did not scan, the older Aeolic
left. The practice in traditional books. regular,
form was
is
common, one may almost say
northern and southern forms,
French of Paris,
Many English ballads occur in many old French poems in Norman-French, and Picard. And this
'
stage of the Homeric poems has been accepted by almost all advanced critics. Yet it needs an important correction. Fick's full theory, with Kynaithos and the sixth century included, has had few supporters. And if we abandon that definite date and person, the linguistic arguments rather change their character. For the two most characteristic distinctions of the Ionian speech,
general conception of an
Aeolic
'
204
vm
the loss of itf-sounds and the turning of a into rj, can be shown to have occurred later, and perhaps considerably later,
than the
that the
first
foundations of the
cities in
Asia Minor.
So
w and the long a sounds of Homer were as much the property of Proto- Ionic, if we may use the term omitting for the moment the numerous false forms and modernisms of
our present texts as of Aeolic. The language of Homer is markedly based upon an older stage of the Greek language than either the Ionic of Herodotus or the Lesbian of Sappho. 1
This
is illustrated,
among
other facts,
by the curious
affinities
between the Epic dialect and two so-called Aeolic dialects utterly out of the range of epic influence, Arcadian and
Cyprian.
What can
there be in
common between
Arcadia, the central
and Cyprus, the remote Greek island in the gates of the Semite ? Nothing, one would say, but their isolation. They were both so cut off from the normal currents of progressive Greek civilization that they retained more than other communities of their original speech, as the French in Canada retain peculiar elements of the language of Louis XIV. And consequently they show curious agreements with Homer, whose dialect, for reasons easily intelligible, clung to the oldest form of speech that was capable
highlands of the Peloponnese,
of being comfortably understood.
It is not, therefore, accurate
to say that Homer has been translated from Aeolic into Ionic, if by Aeolic we mean sixth-century Lesbian, or the group of
which Lesbian
is,
is
I think, accurate
the type, Lesbian-Thessalian-Boeotian. It if we mean that Homer has been worked
over from an ancient dialect,
much more
closely akin to the
Aeolic of Lesbos and South Thessaly than to the language of the mixed multitudes of the Ionian cities.
There is certainly a strong Lesbian element, as was recognized in antiquity. There are certain forms of words which are definitely Lesbian, and not primitive, dialectical peculiarities
1
which
first
originated in the Lesbian Aeolic dialects
pp. 455-88.
See the valuable Appendix to Monro's edition of Odyssey, xiii-xxiv, He seems to me to underrate the Aeolic element.
vm THE AEOLIAN MIGRATION AND EARLIER

falsely
205
formed datives in
-KCOZJ,
-eo-o-t,
falsely
ciples in
-KOTOS', a preference for K*V over av,
forms like
SAXvSis-,
vvâ
&c.
formed perfect partiand various The Lesbian form dy/o&o

kept in the imperative,
for aipeu is generally altered,
but
is
where
earlier
it
earlier
was not recognized. Still, the main texture of the Homeric language is not Lesbian- Aeolic, but some and more widely diffused speech. What does this
?
mean
of the
in history
It is just
what we should have expected from our

of the
analysis
raw material
poems.
It is the speech of these
immensely old
tribal traditions which, as we have seen, form the ultimate historical content of the Iliad. What took place in Aeolia or Lesbos was the first collecting of them into
a Trojan setting. It is interesting in this connexion to notice that the scenery of the similes is apt to be Thessalian and not Asiatic that the Muses come from Olympus and the
:
vale of Pieria in Thessaly,
wander,
still
keep their
'
and the gods, wherever they may 1 Olympian houses '.
I
I
its
have been like before it took Here we are getting beyond our evidence. Perhaps originally, as Professor Usener sugheroes gests, it may have consisted of the praises of the
this epic material
What can
Trojan or
Homeric shape
'
'
or ancestors, sung in religious worship at the Hearth. The Bard was a necessary part of a noble house, and his chief
business
was the celebration

or
of
the
'
heroes
'.
At some
moment
other
these
sacred commemorations of each
separate tribal hearth began to pass beyond the limit of the house. The story or the song became more interesting than
the particular to hear them.
'
hero
'
of
whom
it
was
told.
Strangers liked
There must have been some great deed or in common, some impulse to history writing, some experience
breaking
down
of family
and
tribal barriers.
It is possible
1 The Mysian Olympus may have been regarded locally as the seat of the but the Homeric gods evidently dwell in the Thessalian Olympus. gods 2 Usener, 1. c., cites Beowulf and the Welsh laws settling the precedence of the bards the chief bard comes next after the head of the house.
'
'
206
that
it is

many
possible that that migration
vm
;
such crises occurred before the Aeolic migration was itself the crisis.
A
I
raw material consisting
of various disconnected religious

:
songs and lays in praise of particular tribal ancestors or gods a process of weaving these materials into a connected frame-
work by the bards

^
if
of the Aeolian migration
these seem to
be the conditions of what we
may
call
the
first
birth of
we mean by Homer
the author of the Iliad.
Homer, The case
little different for the other cycles of Epic Saga, the Boeotian, Phocian, and Argive Epics, the Odyssey, Cypria, and Argonautica. Some of these never passed through Aeolis
would be a
imitation,
But some corresponding stage, helped out by mutual must have occurred in all the longer traditional And there is this to observe that however loosely Epics. the various masses of legend floated, there was in very early times some feeling that they formed a whole, or at least a series of wholes. There was some conception of a consecutive chronicle or history. Each bard is understood to begin his lay ilvOev eAcoy, or r&v aôOev ye at some parat
all.
:
ticular point in the great story.
The next birth of Homer was certainly in Ionia. We have seen that the colonists of Lesbos had some pretensions to
so close.
The place from which the exodus came was The bridge from Mt. Pelion to Aeolis, by Skyros and Lesbos, is so straight and complete. And, since the
unity of race.
form
peoples are the same, the name Aioleis may well be a byof the well-known Ach-aioi. Similarly, the Paiones
;
include Siropaiones and Paioplai the Pelag-ones seem to be a by-form of the Pelagones, and even of the Pelag-skoi or Pelasgoi. There may also have been some unity of race in the
extreme south of Asia Minor, where the group called itself Doris '. The Dorian tribes, perhaps coming on from Crete, were at any rate the leaders of their communities. But all
'
along the great stretch of coast between these two little groups, there seems to have been no definite unity or common descent. Every city wall contained a
viii
THE SECOND BIRTH OF HOMER
207
mixed multitude '. They could merely be classed together as lawones ', Sons of Javan, and even that name is given them by foreigners. It looks as if these ancestors of the lonians had in the extreme stress of their migrations lost hold upon their Achaean At any rate, it was only in later times, and only traditions.
a
'
'
by turning to
their northern neighbours, that the lonians

It
obtained, or recovered, their heritage in the Epos. For to them then as part of a regular process.
these central settlements, these
came
most
tribeless
and
just fugitive of
it is
the Sons of Javan, that built up the greatest achievements In historical of Greek civilization before the rise of Athens.
times the Ionian Greek is always prevailing over the Aeolian, ousting him, outstripping him, annexing his cities and his The Ionian poet Mimnermus, early in the possessions.
how a party of lonians from Coloand Pylos set forth and captured Aeolian Smyrna. 1 phon The same thing can be shown to have happened in Chios, though there the memory of the conflict was forgotten, and
seventh century, narrates
the island counts as simply Ionian. And these cases may be taken as typical. The Aeolic settlements belong to an earlier,
ruder,
and more
chivalric stage of culture,
and were super-
seded by the higher intelligence and practical adaptability of the lonians. And besides their walled cities, the Aeolians
were robbed also of their Homer.
How
at
;
did this process take place
There
may
conceivably
some time have been a definite authoritative change of dialect but it seems more likely that the Epic dialect graduAs more and ally changed as the spoken language changed.
1
Miinn.
9.
He makes no
apology
but we have beside
his verses a
more
defensive Ionian account of the affair, explaining that they were not the The town first belonged to the Leleges ; Strabo, xiv. 634. aggressors. ' they were driven out by Smyrnaeans from Ionic Ephesus : they were
'
expelled
*
by Aeolians, but returned with help from Ionic Colophon, and regained their own land '. The story illustrates first the tendency of Ionia to outstrip and thrust aside Aeoh's and secondly, the existence of a certain feeling of shame in thus expelling a city of brother Greeks. To drive out Leleges was of course fair hunting. Of. Wilamowitz, Panionion,
;
in Sitzungsbcr. Berlin.
Akad. 1906,
iii.
208

cities,
vm
began
more Greek
Ibo
and those the
richer
and
larger ones,
drop the letter Vau and to pronounce Eta instead of long Alpha, the bards who recited Homer in those cities naturally changed their pronunciation too. Such a change would be
as unconscious as the
nunciation of tea or room.

decisive motive
of
modern English change in the proBut there was another and a
change.
We
though a short lay
may be
recited
have seen already that, round a camp fire or
a banquet board, a poem at all approaching the length of the Iliad or Odyssey can only be recited on some great public occasion, lasting over several days, and consequently can only
have been created with that

though our information
is
sort of occasion in view.
Now
imperfect, it seems certain that the greatest gatherings in the Aegean were Ionian. Bards \vho wished to compete at the Panegureis at Delos, at Panionion, at Ephesus, must almost of necessity recite in Ionic Greek, and change their method of pronunciation as the
spoken pronunciation changed. The Olympian Muses, if their ambition insisted upon a great poem and a great audience,
must perforce abandon their native accent. Aeolis was left in a backwater. And when it emerged, it spoke in tones as different from those of its old Homer as can well be conceived. Poetry in Lesbos became Traditional Poetry no more. We must leave it aside and return to the
development
of
Homer
in Ionia.
IX
THE ILIAD AS A GREAT POEM

THE HOMERIC SPIRIT AND THE GREATNESS OF THE ILIAD
I
WE still stand under the spell of the Iliad. Amid the deepest
there
is
woven in the thread of our Western civilizamore than one which is drawn originally from tion and Greek literature. And at the fountain-head of / Greece
strands that are
I
Greek literature there stands, naturally enough, the dateless traditional book, not indeed sacred as in other lands, but
still
,J of
human
unapproachable, and far removed from the possibilities competition. This was the position of the Iliad in
Rome took over the conception, and it has passed on, for the most part, to be part of the intellectual heritage of the Western world.
Alexandrian Greece.
Criticism has, of course, in
some
respects, shattered the
Alexandrian view to pieces.
all-wise poet, Homer, we similar to those of Achilles or
Instead of the primaeval and are left with a kind of saga-figure,
flashing-helmeted Son
of
a Shield-Belt.
Agamemnon, or the mighty The name Homeros

person. that he
may
But
i
conceivably be a
if
so,
name once borne by a living we know nothing of him, except indeed
did not, in any complete sense, write the Iliad and Odyssey. There is in North India a god called Nikal Seyn, whose name
have been originally John Nicholson. But I suspect that it would be difficult to detect much of the
we know
to
character or history of Mr. Nicholson in the legends now current about the god. It seems on the whole safest to
regard
Homeros
as the
name
of
an imaginary ancestor wor-
MTJRRAY
210
ix
shipped by the schools of bards called 'O/xrjpt'Sat or 'O/^pou TratSes, a name parallel to Ion, or Doros, or Hellen, or even
Amphictyon. The exact form of theory which we accept is There is a broad general agreement between of little moment. the followers and correctors of Wolff and Lachmann. most of
wish in the present lecture to consider what effect this scientific analysis has, or should have, upon our general understanding of the Iliad as a great poem.
I
Mr. Mackail, in his Life
of
William Morris, remarks in
passing that in the Iliad we have a second-rate subject made into a first-rate and indeed incomparable poem by the genius I think this view would probably be widely of a great poet.
accepted.
ness.
Many
scholars
subject of the
Wrath was The Wrath against Hector after Patroclus' death may be a great subject. But the Wrath with Agamemnon about a personal slight is not. The fact that in the loss of Briseis
it is almost entirely the personal slight, not the loss of a beloved being, that matters to Achilles, puts all the emotion So much many scholars would admit, several degrees lower. themselves by asserting the splendid perand then console
agree, with a pang, that the not quite in the first rank of noble-
would
fection of the
poem and
the genius of the incomparable

is
poet.
Yet
cannot think that there
for those
who wish
to reach the truth.
any road in this direction The incomparable
poet certainly did not write the whole Iliad. It is too clearly a work of many successive ages. Where then shall we place
him ? Shall we make him the author of the original Wrath and suggest that the great expansions and the brilliant though faulty composition of the Iliad as a whole are the work of inferior imitators or even interpolators ? That is impossible. For much of the finest work in the Iliad, the Hector and Andromache passage, for instance, and the whole Ransoming of Hector, belong to the later parts. Or can you reverse the and suppose a large and moderately good epic hypothesis, slowly growing for centuries, and falling into the hands of an
' '
ix
THE SUBJECT AND THE POET
211
incomparable poet right at the end, when complete or nearly complete ? Right at the end he cannot have been. For the
few really bad parts of both Iliad and Odyssey belong to the latest strata. (Some instances will be given in the next But can we operate with the hypothesis of one lecture.)
supremely great poet working somewhere near the end ? and yet it is not That seems to me less unlike the facts
:
For though as the growth of the poem went on the subject was in a way ennobled and the characters deepened, still most of the work of the later bards lay more in arrangement and adaptation than in what we should call
a workable theory.
The poet, for instance, who put the Sarcreative poetry. or Bellerophon passages into our Iliad, fine as he was, pedon
cannot be regarded as definitely superior to the poet who 1 But the fact is originally wrote them for another context.
struction of the Iliad, can seldom get
differing degrees of poetical skill.
differences, it
is
that criticism, which reveals a hundred joints in the conmuch result from the
And when
fall
there are such
below a general pieces not that they stand startlingly above it. The high average Iliad never reads like the work of many respectable and one
rather that
:
some
transcendent
artist.
Indeed, there
is
nothing more striking
about the Iliad than, comparatively speaking, the uniformity In a highly conof splendour with which it is written.
earth,
ventional language, which can never have been spoken on amid highly conventional surroundings of story, of
imagination, of similes, there is somehow built up a great Homeric style, which, as far as one can judge, an ordinary
good minstrel, of suitable temperament, trained from youth, and steeped in the epic atmosphere, could reproduce without effort, so that, when one of the good Homeridae spoke, the
voice
Iliad
was that no poet
of his great ancestor,

of
Homer.
I feel in the
other
commoner men.
individual genius standing out against I believe that in these poems we are
brought face to face with something in a sense greater and more august than individual genius. But of that presently.
1
See Lecture VII, pp. 161
f.,
VIII,
p. 191.
P2
212
I
is,

wish
first
ix
It
to
consider
patiently
this
difficulty.
I suppose, quite clear that the Iliad is a
good poem.
Most people have only to read it to feel quite sure of and if any particular reader does not feel sure, the fact his own instinct, there is enough authority on the by subject to convince any but the most self-confident that
:
his
is
doubts are ill-grounded. Now why is it that the Iliad a good poem when it has so many of the characteristics
of a
bad one
In the
'
first
place, as
'
we
noticed above, the subject
is
second-rate.
The horrid phrase which
describes Achilles as
And is not very far from the truth. not a noble, nor yet a poetical, state of mind. sulking His eloAchilles, again, is not a very sympathetic hero. quence is amazing, and we are ready to believe in his dauntless courage and prowess and swiftness of foot. But, if it were
sulking in his tent
is
not for his mere misery and repentance at the end of the poem, I think that most readers would actually dislike him
for his crude pride of love.
.
and
self-absorption, his cruelty
and lack
one as
Even
his love for Patroclus never impresses

it
:
having unselfishness about
it is
not like the love of Orestes
and Pylades.
Again, there
to a
is
a test which most people apply instinctively

of fiction,
modern work
and which
is
most powerful
in
separating the good from the bad. I mean the amount of finish and conscientiousness in the more hidden parts. What
we
'
'
showy the momentary

which
will
call
or
flashy work is generally effect of particular scenes

If
'
'
work
is
which strong, but

in
you look close you find weaknesses, inconsistencies, contradictions. Now, notoriously, The wall round the Greek this is the case with the Iliad. camp alone, though the writing about it is always good and
stirring, will
not bear looking into.
sort of inner flaw.
provide half a dozen glaring instances of this It is built at the end of H in the tenth
as
year of the war. that it was built
M and N
Yet the opening lines of M (1-32) imply it naturally would be in the first. In the wall is sometimes present and sometimes absent.
ix
FLAWS IN THE
'ILIAD'
213
Also two separate heroes, Hector and Sarpedon, are mentioned in different places, and in exactly the same words, as being the first to get over it (M 438, n 558). There is a
fearful fight
to the ships
when the Trojans are attacking the wall to get when they retreat in panic there is generally
:
no wall
there.
1
All this
is
explained in detail in Dr. Leaf's
commentary.
It is pretty clear that there
were two versions
of the fighting extant,
and one in which
it
one in which the camp was unfortified, was provided with a wall and moat.
And
brilliant episodes are
borrowed from one or the other as
the minstrels pleased. Again, there is the cardinal instance of the contradiction
between Books
II
and
I.
In Book
FT,
Achilles, as
he sees the
routed Greeks, breaks into a splendid complaint that if only Agamemnon would seek his friendship and offer him amends
the Trojans would soon fly and choke the trenches with He sends Patroclus forth to help the Greeks, their dead '. but warns him not to go too far in pursuit, lest Agamemnon
'
should
feel
too
secure
and
should
fail
to
offer
atone-
ment.
Obviously, then, Agamemnon has not offered atonement. is a book before this which is occupied from fi^st to last entirely with Agamemnon's offers of princely atone-
Yet there
before
One sees what has happened. Both passages lay some compiler of the Iliad. They were not consistent, but each was too good to lose. He put both in, sacrificing, like a bad artist, the whole to the part. Thirdly, there is the same sort of fault running through
ment
!
many
of the descriptions.
Even the
battle scenes, vivid as
they are, will sometimes not bear thinking out. As we saw in the case of the breastplate, the poet has not fully thought out the words he was using. It sounds well. It is exciting.
But
it is
not
real.
It is like a battle
composed by some
romantic poet,
1
who
furnishes his warriors with gleaming
The late Professor Earle, in the American Journal of Philology, Oct. 1905, argued that Thucydides in his introduction speaks of an Iliad in which
there was no wall.
214
THK RISK OF THK (iRKKK

in
KPIC
ix
morions and resounding culverins, but

things they are.
not quite sure what
Apply the same test even to the language, the miraeulous heaven-sent language whieh has been the wonder and the morions Is it not full of such a\\e of all poets afterward.
c '
upon every page fairsounding words, whose meaning scorns to have boon far from clear to the poets themselves who used them ? Of course it
?
and 'culverins'
Do you not
find
is
rare to find a definite substantive of
which the meaning

:
is
quite unknown, though even such occur
for instance, in
the ease of epithets of the gods. 'Exacts aKaKT?ra, bidKTOpos not one of the epithets is understood. There a/>yeu/>oVr?yv,
are also a few words which are used in
two
1
senses, of
which
But it is more fairly say that one is a mistake. often the form of the word or sentence that shows a lack of
we can
understanding.
There are crowds
of
words which, as they
stand, are no words but only mistake's, old forms first miswritten and then wrongly re-corrected so as to fill up the
There are words first wrongly divided, like Pi}8v/uu>?, metre. and then wrongly explained. Now, of course, a great deal of this is more surface corruption '. Many mistakes are only due to the latest rhapsodes, who recited the Jonic poem in Attica, and thus inevitably
'
understood the older Ionic forms.
introduced Attic elements into the language, and even misYou can largely remove
the Atticisms and obvious errors. Editors like Van Loo u wen and Platt and R/aoh have corrected them by the hundred, with most useful and instructive results. Hut the process of
correction
and there
never complete. Clear away the Attic surface rises beneath another surface with another set of
is
corruptions, where lon'c rhapsodes have introduced just the same elements of confusion into an Aeolie, or at least a preJonic, language.
The confusion
of tongues
is
deep down
in
in
the heart of the Homeric dialect, and no surgery can cut beneath it.
the world
Of course one must not judge

1 <
a poet as
one would a gramtil
.</.
H' r>7
(
.
fitfiovirijTOs
Oi8in6dao t \ 584 artvro
ix
CONFUSION IN LANGUAGE
Yet
It
IN SIMILES
215
marian.
this confusion of tongues has a certain
as evidence.
weight seems to be part of a general vagueness of
treatment, a lack of precision and of grip. We often find, too, that descriptive phrases are not used
fit the thing described. They are caught from a store of such things perpetual epithets, up ready-made front halves of lines, back halves of lines, whole lines, if need The stores of the poets were full be, and long formulae.
so as accurately to
and brimming.
made.
bard need only put in his hand and choose
out a well-sounding phrase.
Even the
similes
are readyits
There must have been originally some poet who saw
the spring of some warrior in battle, and was struck by
But that was long before our likeness to the leap of a lion. Iliad. The poets of our Iliad scarcely need to have seen
a lion. They have their stores of traditional similes taken from almost every moment in a lion's life when he is hungry, when he is full, when he attacks the fold, when he retires from the fold, when he is wounded, when he is triumphant,
:
when he
is
scared with torches,
when he walks ravening
in
;
Every simile is fine, vivid, and lifelike but a good many of them are not apposite to the case for which they are used, and all have the same readythe wind and rain.
made
air.
:
Consider in detail this fine simile (M 41) As in the midst of hounds and men that are hunters, a boar or a lion wheels, glaring in his strength and they set themselves like a wall and stand against him, and the spears fly fast from their hands yet his proud heart trembles not nor flees, till his daring is his death, but swiftly he turns and turns, making trial of the lines of men and wheresoever he charges, the lines of men
;
;
give way.
The description of the boar or lion situation does it seem to describe ?
is
but what splendid hero left alone, hard

:
pressed by enemies but refusing to retreat ? That is what one thinks of. That is probably the situation for which it
was
But, as the passage stands, the Greeks originally written. are flying and Hector pursuing them back beyond their wall.
216

'
:
ix
Even so Hector, going up and down the throng, besought his comrades, urging them to cross the trench.' Hector, urging on his conquering comrades, is really
The passage continues
not particularly like this surrounded and baffled
daring
is his
'
lion,
whose
death.'
Now
there
like
is
at a point of the action immediately before this a digression between in A 551, there is a hero very
lion, to wit, Aias,
indeed to this boar or

to the last
who has been
up
moment
of the Trojans
and protecting the Greek
standing alone against the advance At the end retreat.

spirit of flight.
Zeus sent into him also a
He moved backward, searching with his eyes as a wild beast searches, back toward the throng of his comrades,
half turning again
knee.
Even
and again, slowly changing knee for as a red lion draws back from a yard of
oxen, frighted by hounds and husbandmen keeping vigil all night long, who suffer him not to take out the fat of the oxen and hungering for flesh, he charges but wins nothing so fast fly spears from brave hands to meet him, and flaming torches, which he shrinks from for all his fury and at dawn he goes away alone with in his heart so then did Aias go back from misery the Trojans, unwilling and with misery in his heart. For he feared for the ships of the Achaeans.
;
; ;
:
There follows instantly another simile, slightly strange perhaps to our conventional taste, but very vivid and good.
Even as an ass going beside a field overpowers the boys who drive him, a dull ass about whose back many a staff is broken and he enters the standing corn and ravages it, and the boys smite him with sticks, but their strength is feeble, and scarcely do they drive him out when he has had his fill of the corn. So then about Aias the tall, son of Telamon, high-hearted Trojans and
;
allies
famed
afar followed thrusting, &c., &c.

first simile,
Now
think of our
the lion or boar surrounded
and confronted by a wall of men and hounds, but^refu to retire. Does it not seem to belong here rather) its present context ? Did it not perhaps describe^
of Aias just a
moment
earlier,
while he
still stc
ix
COMPOUND SIMILES IN M
'
217
ships
Zeus had not yet sent into him that fear for the Achaean I think, agreeing with Leaf and others, that this ?
'
must have been the original place for which the simile was written. The rhapsode who was composing our eleventh and twelfth book found in various MSS., that came somehow into his hands, no less than three different similes applied to Aias covering the Greek retreat. He put two of them straight in The together, the midnight lion and the ass in the corn. other was far too good to lose, so he kept it by him to use at the first opportunity. Early in the next book came the mention of a wall, and the hounds and hunters in the simile are said to be like a wall. That place would do. So he put it in there and at present the triumphant advance of Hector
;
is
compared to the stubbornness

Does
of
a baffled boar or lion
refusing to retreat.
this explanation fail to carry conviction
is,
?
Demonthe
stration
of course, impossible in these questions of critiin the
cism.
But take another case

ff.)
same book.
When
Trojans (M 131
are charging at the gate of the Greek wall, they find there standing in front of the gate two heroes of the race of the Lapithae, Polypoites and Leonteus.
They two in front of the high gate were standing like high-crested oaks on a piountain, which abide the wind and the rain through all days, firm in their long roots that reach deep into the earth.
A moment
after we are told of these same two men Out then they charged and fought in front
of
the
gates, like wild boars on a mountain, who abide the oncoming throng of men and hounds, and charging sidelong break the underwood about them, tearing it rootof gnashing the noise of the bright bronze upon their bodies, smitten with shafts in front. People who stand firm in front of a gate, like oaks, are not .like wild boars that rush out and tear up the under-
wise up, and through

tusks. ...
all else
comes the noise
So came through
all else
Imaking a noise with

but the
aes.
their tusks.
This
may sound
difficulty is quite real, and was felt in Different solutions are offered, for instance,
218
ix
by Porphyry and Hephaestion. Did not the last compiler M find in two different books two different accounts of this fight at the gate ? In one the two Lapithae alone stood like oaks. In another a mass of Greeks charged out, led very possibly, but not certainly, by the two Lapithae. Both
of
were too good to lose. He followed the story of the yet he was reluctant to lose the wild boars. So observe his mode of procedure. He puts in the wild boars, and then, at the end, soothes the imagination of any hearer
similes
oaks,
who
is puzzled at the lack of resemblance, by explaining that the point of similarity lies in the noise. Boars' tusks make a noise, and so do shields struck with spears x
!
simile, fifteen lines later, makes of this hypothesis almost what in this atmosphere of conjectures may be called a certainty. Asius, who is leading the Trojan attack, cries
Another
wasps who and pour out to fight with hunters to protect their young'. That comparison can scarcely have been invented to describe two solitary heroes standing in front of a gate. It may well have described a great mass of Greeks pouring out through the gate. But that was part of the rejected story. It belonged to the same version as the rushing wild boars. 2 These are mere illustrations. The force of the argument, of course, depends upon the number of such cases. The conclusion is hard to resist, and it is one that seems
out that
'
these
men
are like a
swarm
of bees or
have
built their nests beside a rocky path,
is
idiom by which a mere detail in the original scheme of the simile the base of a fresh simile' (Leaf) has many parallels in Homer, but hardly in such an extreme degree as this. The passage O 623 ff. is
An
'
made
very similar, and probably has a similar history. Hector's onset is compared ( 1 ) to waves falling on a rock, which stands immovable (2) to a wave then comes v. 629, crashing down upon a ship, which is badly shaken
; ;
'
even so was the
spirit of the
Achaeans shaken within their breasts
'.
I sus-
pect that these two similes come from separate sources ; the minstrel felt them to be not quite consistent, so he added v. 629. It is worth remarking that the five lines just preceding are inconsistent with their present context,
and were condemned by Zenodotus and Aristarchus.

2
Breal,
of
1.
c. p.
115, traces the
douUe names
of sources.
and
men
to the
same multiplicity
in the languages of gods One source said
another Ai-ycuW (A 404).
ix
WHAT
IN ORIGINALITY
from the high value
similes, the
219
to detract enormously
of the
poems as
original poetry. the poetry of Homer, are in many adopted ready-made. Their vividness,
Even the
very breath of life of cases, indeed usually,

their
closeness
of
observation, their air of freshness

deceptive.
Nearly
all
of
and spontaneity, are all are taken over from older them
originally written to describe
books, and
many
of
them were
some quite
different occasion.
which we have arrayed in a catalogue, and that one which is considered fatal to any art which claims to be what generally we call original or individual ', a thing created by a I do not say that Homer has no other flaws. particular man.
All these qualities,
have one common

' '
characteristic,
'
But as
to these already mentioned, I venture to think that

find
we only
them
vicious because
we
standards.
We
are applying
to
are judging by wrong a traditional poem the
creation of whole generations of men, poets
and
hearers,
working through many ages, canons which only apply to the works to which we are accustomed in modern literature,
original
poems, made at a definite date by a definite

is
self-
conscious author.
The subject
thoughts.
First of
a
it.
difficult one,
and
am
not sure that I see
clearly through
But
I will try to give the result of
my
all,
I think that
less
we
are apt to confuse originality
with a
much
;
important thing, novelty.
story about
novelty
motor-cars or wireless telegraphy possesses, or once possessed, but whether it ever possessed originality depended
entirely
on qualities in the author's mind. Of course, there was originality in conceiving the notion of
bringing the motor-car or the wireless telegraph into the realm of art. A very small modicum of originality, but still some.
And
I would not say that such originality was contemptible, because one of the ways in which art advances is by the opening up of new regions to its influence, or, in other words,
220

of
ix
Also,
by the discovery
the
is
beauty or interest in new places.
conceives or executes a thing for the first time no doubt apt to do so with a freshness and intensity which
man who
make his work not only novel but original. But the difference between the two qualities is clear. Mere novelty is a thing external and accidental. It depends upon dates. It
For instance, the Hippolytus seems to have been the first love tragedy in European literature. In that sense it was novel, but its novelty has worn off during these last two thousand five hundred years. Yet its originality is living still and felt vividly.
wears
off.
means a spring, a rising of water. And, though it generally a mere waste of ingenuity to tie the sense of a word down to its supposed derivation, I suspect that the most fruitful way of understanding the word originality may be to remember this meaning. We do call a work of art original when it produces the impression of a living source, so that one says Here is beauty or wisdom springing not drawn through long pipes nor collected in buckets.'
Origo
is
'
' '
:
self -moving quality is a thing which does not on novelty, and therefore cannot grow stale. I redepend member examining in Florence a MS. of Euripides, which
This spring-like
read, blurred with age and sea- water and exposure to the sun. And as I pored over it, there gradually showed through the dusty blur the first words of a lyric in
was very hard to
was as old as the hills, and I had known Yet the freshness of it glowed through that rather stale air like something young and living. I remember a feeling of flowers and of springing water. This quality has not much to do with novelty. Probably it does imply that the poet has in some sense gone himself
the Alcestis.
It
it
by heart
for years.
to the fountain-head, that his emotion is a real first-hand emotion, self-moving and possessed of a life of its own, not merely a derivative emotion responding to the emotion of
another.
Yet I doubt if even
so
much can be fairly demanded,
that a poet, to be original, must himself go to the fountainhead. The words are ambiguous. It would be preposterous
ix
to
ORIGINALITY
demand
that a writer shall experience personally
all
221
that
great
he writes about.
And
it is
very noteworthy
how many
poets seem to have drawn most of

directly
their inspiration not
from experience, but derivatively from experience already interpreted in other men's poetry. Think of Burns' s There is almost no poetry so original in the impressongs. And yet we have detailed evidence that sion it makes. a great deal of Burns's most beautiful and spontaneous work
is
working up of old traditional material. He thought over the words and rhythm of an existing country song while
really a
his wife
air, and thus gradually he modified the and added others, till a song was produced, a song both new and old, derivative and yet highly original. I suspect that the mistake which we are apt to make is to apply a merely external test to something that depends on the most intimate workings of a man's imagination. The
sang the
existing verses
thing that is of importance in a poem, given 'the necessary technical power, is not mere novelty, nor yet personal knowledge or experience, but simply the intensity of imagination
with which the poet has realized his subject. intensity may be the product of a thousand things
And
;
that
of
which
'
personal experience may, but need not, be one. Almost the first characteristic which one notes in what we call a man
of genius is his power of making a very little experience reach an enormous way. This sounds very different from
'
pains.
Carlyle's definition of genius as an infinite capacity for taking But in reality that capacity for taking pains is itself
dependent on an intense and absorbing interest. So long as you are really interested, you cannot help taking pains. As
the interest fades, you first begin to be conscious of the pains, and then cease to take any more. In the same way, when we blame a work of Art as con'
ventional
'
or
'
laboured
'
or the like,
we
language loosely. A laboured work on which the man has worked hard
the labour
is
is of
:
are often using course not a work
it is
a work in which
is
more manifest than the

of labour.
result, or in
which one
somehow conscious
Pains have been taken, but
222
ix
some other factor of success is not there. A conventional work is not a work composed according to the rules of some convention or other. All art is that. It is a work in which other qualities are lacking, and the convention obtrudes
itself.
Intensity of imagination
as
is
the important thing.
It is
'
[intensity of imagination that
makes a
poet's
work
real
',
we say
spontaneous, infectious or convincing.

;
it is this
that creates an atmosphere on opening the pages of a book, that

world, and a world
full of real
Especially that makes us feel,

are in a different
we
r
beings about whom, in one

I suspect that ultimately the
way or another, we care. greatness of a poem or

transported to this
is
And
work
:
of imaginative art
depends
mostly upon two questions
how
strongly
we
feel ourselves
when w e
r
get there,
first
r
new world, and what sort how great or interesting

page
;
of a world it
or beautiful. 1
of the
Think
of the first scene of Hamlet, the first

lines of
Divina
Commedia, the and into what
Agamemnon swiftly w onderful regions they carry you And if you apply this same test to the Iliad or Odyssey, the response is so amazing that you understand at once why these poems
!
the
how
have so often and

of
all
in such various ages been considered the greatest. Open the book anywhere absolutely (A 33). 'So spake he, and the old man trembled and obeyed
and he went in silence by the shore of the manysounding sea, and prayed alone to the Lord Apollo, \vhom fair-haired Leto bare.' Turn the pages (2 573). And a herd he wrought thereon of straight-horned kine. The kine were wrought of gold and of tin, and lowing they w ended forth from the byre to their pasture, by the side of a singing river, I look by a bed of slender reeds.' Turn again (X 356). thee and know thee as thou art. I could not have upon
his \vord
;
'
'
bent thee, for the heart is iron within thy breast. Therefore bew are lest I be a wrath of god upon thee, on that day when
r
1 Of course, in proportion as art becomes more realistic the in question becomes more and more closely the present world
'
new world
'
more vividly
felt
and understood.
ix
Paris
INTENSITY OF IMAGINATION IN HOMER

and Phoebus Apollo
1
223
slay thee in all thy valour at the
Scaean Gates.'
irresistibly do the chance words bear one away, and what a world We can stand apart and argue and analyse, and show that the real world portrayed in the poems was one full of suffering and injustice, and that the poet was sometimes over-lax in his moral judgements. Yet the world )into which he takes us is somehow more splendid than any
How
to
^created
by other men.
Where were
there ever battles or
heroes like these, such beauty, such manliness, such terror
and pity and passion, and such There are many strong men and
all-ruling
fair
majesty of calm
in other stories
women
why
is it
that, almost before a
our bones the strength of

of these grave
word is spoken, we feel in these Homeric heroes, the beauty

?
and white-armed women
You remember,
in the
Old Testament, the watchman who stood upon the tower in Jezreel, when they sent out the horsemen one after And the watchman answered and said He came another
c
: :
even unto them and cometh not again. And the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi for he driveth
;
furiously.'
We knew
before.
We
nothing about the driving of Jehu hear no word more about it afterwards. But
it
the one sentence has behind

tion
just that intensity of imagina-
which makes thoughts
live
and vibrate
like
new
things
a hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand, years after their first utterance. And that is the quality that one finds in
Homer.
1
*fis
5
(f>ar\ ZSeifffv 8' 6
yepcw
KCLI
etrfiOcro
jjLvO<y'
/3?}
OLKCOJV irapd Btva iro\v$\oiff&oio 6a\daarjs'

5
7TO\Xd
5'
7TtT
dirdvfvOc KIOJV
r'jpaO'
6 yepcubs
\VJTti}.
'ATToAAott/t aVCLKTl,
rOV
-fjvKOfJlOS
TtK
(A 33
ff.)
'Ev
8'
dyi\rjv
-noirja^
fiowv opOoKpaipdcav
at 8 e /Socs xpvaoio r^rev-âro Kaffffirepov re,

fjLVKTjOljlSf
Trap
8' OLTTO KOnpOV TTffffeVOVTO 1/O/iOI/Sf noraôv KckaSovra, irapci poSavbv Sovatcrja.
1
(5 573
ff.)
(v ytyvajffKcw npOTioffffOfiai, ovb* dp' irfiffiv* yap aoi ye ffidrjpcos Iv typeal Ov/
ff
'H
o VVV,
TO>
fji-q
TOI rt Ocojv
ere
fjLTjvi^JLa
ycvufiai
ore KCV
Ildpis teal $ot(3os
v eovr' oMecaaiv
&\
Sfcatyfft irv\rjatv.
(X 356
ff.)
224
ix
Think how the beauty of Helen has lived through the ages. Like the driving of Jehu, it is now an immortal thing. And the main, though not of course the sole, source of the whole conception is certainly the Iliad. Yet in the whole Iliad
word spoken in description of Helen. As Lessing has remarked in a well-known passage of the
there
is
practically not a
Laokoon, almost the whole of our knowledge of Helen's beauty comes from a few lines in the third book, where Helen goes
up to the wall of Troy to see the battle between Menelaus and Paris. So speaking, the goddess put into her heart a longing for her husband of yore and her city and her father and mother. And straightway she veiled herself with white linen, and went forth from her chamber shedding a great .' The elders of Troy were seated on the wall, tear. and when they saw Helen coming, softly they spake to one " another winged words Small wonder that the Trojans and
'
. .
'
mailed Greeks should endure pain through many years for such a woman. Strangely like she is in face to some iml That is all we know. Not one of all the Homeric bards fell into the yawning trap of describing Helen, and making a catalogue of her features. She was veiled she was weeping and she was strangely like in face to some immortal spirit. And the old men, who strove for peace, could feel no anger at the war.
mortal
'
spirit.'
Now this intensity of imagination can be attained by many writers at their most exalted moments. Their imagination
can follow the
call of their
emotions.
is
'
But one
of the extra-
the prevalence of this intensity all through the ordinary things of life. As riseth the shrieking of cranes in front of the sunrise, cranes that have fled from
*Hs
(lirovffa
ordinary things in the Iliad
Oca y\VKv
dvfyos T
avri/ca
upfjidr'
F
irporcpoio Kal affrcos 178^
TOKTJW
(F 139
ff.)
8'
dpyvvfj(n Ka\in//afivrj oOovyoiv

y
(K OaXdfJLOio rcpcv Kara Sdtcpv x* OV(Ja"
H/fa rrpos d\\rj\ovs ctrta irrp6fvr " ov vcfJKffis T/was Kal ivKvrjfudas
dyoptvov
'
roiri$ diupi yvvaiKi iro\vv
aivws dOavdrycrt Dtps
tls
Srna totKw,"
(F 155
ff.j
ix
'
EVEN AS BURNING FIRE
'
225
winter and measureless rain, with shrieking they fly over the streams of ocean, bearing unto the dwarf-men battle and
death.'
x
Who
that can once read
Homer
freely,
untroubled
language, can ever forget the cranes ? And not only the cranes, but the swarming bees, the flies about the milk-pails, the wolves and boars and lions and swift dogs,
by
difficulties of
and the crook-horned swing-footed kine ? It is a fairly wide world that the poets lay open to us, and every remotest
corner of
it is
interesting
and
vivid, every
commonest
ex-
perience in it, the washing of hands, the eating of food, the acts of sleeping and waking, shares somehow in the beauty and even in the grandeur of the whole. Mr. Mackail 2 has
observed
how
full
the poems are of images drawn from

c
fire
the bright armour flashes like fire, the armies clash, even ' as destroying fire that falls upon a limitless forest ; a hero's
'
hands are
like
unto
fire
and
his
wrath unto red iron
'
;
and
a body of burning fire '. The whole poem is shot through with this fire, which seems like a symbol of the inward force of which we have been speaking, a fiery
the
fight together,
men
'
Given this force within, and the intensity of imagination. Homeric language as an instrument for its expression, a
language more gorgeous than Milton's, yet as simple and direct as that of Burns, there is no further need to be surprised at the extraordinary greatness of the Iliad.
But now comes a curious observation. We who are accustomed to modern literature always associate this sort of
imaginative intensity with something personal. We connect it with an artist's individuality, or with originality in the
newness '. It seems as though, under modern conan artist usually did not feel or imagine intensely ditions, unless he was producing some work which was definitely his own and not another's, work which must bear his personal
sense of
1
'
'Ht/r
irep /eXayyr)
ycpdvcav TrcAct ovpavoOi
irpo,
at T*
TTt ovv
\tinwva (pvyov KOI dGfatyarov opPpov,

iir'
K\ayyfi rat y* irtrovrat

2
'tiiceavoio fiodow,
icrjpa <f>epovffai.
dvSpdffi TIvynaioHTt <povov
teal
In one of his lectures as Professor of Poetry at Oxford-
MURRAY
226
ix
name and be marked by his personal experience or character. One element at least in the widespread admiration of such
authors as Browning, Meredith, and Walt Whitman, has been, I think, a feeling that their work must somehow be particularly real
on doing
poets like
it
in a
and spontaneous, because they have insisted way in which, according to most well-conit
stituted judges,
ought not to be done. And conversely, Tennyson or Swinburne have been in certain circles
little
tame, conventional, uninspired, because they seemed to be too obedient to the ideals which poetry had followed before them. I do not specially wish to attack this
despised as a
I largely share in it and prejudice, if it is one. excesses will very likely disappear. But I do very greatly wish to point out that artistic feeling in this matter has not
modern
its
always been the same. Artists have not always wished to stamp their work with their personal characteristics or even Artists have sometimes been, as it were, their personal name.
Protestant or Iconoclast, unable to worship without asserting themselves against the established ritual of their religion
:
sometimes, in happier circumstances, they have accepted and loved the ritual as part of the religion, and wrought out their
own new works
of poetry, not as protests, not as personal outbursts, but as glad and nameless offerings, made in prescribed form to enhance the glory of the spirit whom they
served.
With some
modifications, this seems to have been
the case in Greece, in Canaan, in Scandinavia, during the

periods when great traditional books were slowly growing up. Each successive poet did not assert himself against the tradition,
but gave himself up to the tradition, and added to

all
its
greatness and beauty
that was in him.
The
is
intensity of imagination which makes the Iliad alive It not, it seems to me, the imagination of any one man.
means not that one man of genius created a wonder and passed away. It means that generation after generation of poets, trained in the same schools and a more or less continuous and similar life, steeped themselves to the lips m the
spirit of this great poetry.
They
lived in the Epic saga
and
ix
SELF-ASSERTION AND SELF-DEVOTION

it
227
by
and
for
it.
Great as
it
it
was, for
many
centuries they
continued to build
(
up yet
greater.
What helped them most, perhaps, was the constancy with which the whole race to use a slightly inaccurate word must have loved and cherished this poetry. Amid the chaos that followed /utera ra TpauKa, when the works of art, the
architecture, the laws of ordered society, the very religions of the different centres, were all lost, for the most part never
to return, the
germs
of this poetry
were saved.
The
fugitives
gods, and their wives behind, but the sagas were in their hearts and grew the richer for all their wanderings. They carried their poetry as other nations have
left their treasures, their
carried their religion. after all, is that which
How
we speak
strange and significant a thing, ' of as either the Epic style

'
or 'the Epic language '. It seems more than a style, though, as we have seen, it cannot quite be treated as an organic
wonderful mode of speech but the needs of poetry. The ordinary audiences must have understood it as well as, for instance, our audiences understand the authorized version of
this
spoken language. For many hundreds of years
was kept
alive to serve nothing
the Bible, though the differences between Jacobean and Victorian English are utterly trifling compared with those between
Homer and the prose speech of the earliest Ionic inscriptions. And how wonderfully the poets themselves knew it Even
!
under the microscope of modern philology the Epic dialect appears, in the main, as a sort of organic whole, not a mere mass of incongruous archaistic forms. Van Leeuwen and
Monro can write consistent grammars of it. And this language has been preserved and reconstructed by generations of men who never spoke it except when they recited poetry. It was understood by audiences who never heard it spoken except when they listened to poetry. And not a man among them had any knowledge of the laws of language they had
;
only a sense of style. But to meet the special difficulties raised in the earlier
part of this lecture, let us consider especially the later genera-
Q2
228

;
ix
and the task that lay before them. They were poets but, much more than that, they were Homeridae, or Homerou Paides, the sons and servants of the greatest of the poets. No one dreamed of vying with Homer only of exalting and preserving him. A time came when people
tions of these bards
;
wished for a new style of poetry, for

iambic and personal verse.
lyrics, for elegies, for
coming
of the
less known and more words were taught in schools, others had been
old Epic language was beremote. The meanings of some

for-
The
gotten.
And
the last bards had before
them various books,
not very many, it seems, telling the great legends. For some reason or other we need not discuss what they were there was need to make up a long poem of the Ilias
The later poet how great Poesis, the poetry about Troy. or how small a poet matters little took up his part of the work of composing this long poem. He could write a poem
who wanted him to write one ? How The world was not yet reduced to such straits as that. There was plenty of the old poetry still in his power. He knew it by heart, and he possessed scrolls of it, poetry of men far greater and wiser than he, voices of those who had talked with gods. Diligently and reverently he wove it together. He had as his basis, let us imagine, some plain lay of the Wrath of Achilles, a story in which Agamemnon offered no atonement, and in which there was no wall round the Greek camp. But he found besides a song of the embassy to Achilles and his rejection of the atonehimself, of course
:
but
should he dare to
ment.
wall.
He
Diligently
found great descriptions of fighting at the Greek and reverently, with a good deal of simple
:
cunning, he arranged his scheme so as to make room for all. He put the contradictory passages far apart he altered a word or two to make the inconsistencies less visible. He
wrote,
when he needs must, some unobtrusive

And, amid
lines of his
own
to connect or to explain.
all this
gentle
and
lowly service, he went over the lines of some tremendous passage that shook all his being, then, it would seem from the evidence,
when he rehearsed
his great recitation,
when
ix
there
A SON OF HOMER
came
into
229
men, and a voice The lines that he spoke became his as of Homer himself. own. He had always belonged to them, and now they belonged to him also. And in the midst of them and beyond them he too had freedom to create. And we critics, we mete to him a hard measure. When
spirit of the ancient
him the
he creates, we
call it interpolation. When he preserves with careful ingenuity all the fragments that he can save of his ancient Homer, we call attention to the small joints in his
loved too well to let die.
structure, the occasional incongruity of a simile which he If we knew his name, I suppose we should mock at him. But he has no name. He gave
his name, as he gave all else that was in him, to help, unrewarded, in the building up of the greatest poem that ever founded on the lips of men.
There
is,
outside and beneath the ordinary rules of art,
a quality possessed by some great books or pictures and Denied to others, a quality of attracting sympathy and causing
the imagination of the reader or spectator to awake and co-operate with that of the artist. It is a quality that sometimes irritates a critic, because it acts fitfully and often
depends upon accident.
It puts the efforts of art at the
mercy
of prejudice.
Yet, in a clear air,
when
prejudices can
be laid aside and forgotten, this quality is seen to be, despite its occasional connexion with very third-rate things, itself
love.
this
a great thing, like the power of attracting or not attracting And in the last analysis, I suspect, one will find that
sympathy,
like love in general,

it
mostly goes to the

for
it.
man
who
who both wants

who makes
from
and
will
duly pay
of course
poet
strikes his reader as perfect
none ever are so
saying what he meant

others, is apt to
If
the impression of having entirely succeeded in to say, so that he requires no help
difference.
be treated with some respectful inhe actually seems self-satisfied, then it is much
worse.
The reader becomes lynx-eyed for weaknesses, anxious
to humiliate, like Ruskin, for instance, in his criticisms of
230
ix
And there are Guido and the later Renaissance painters. \other poets or artists whose work has the power of appeal nameless charm and wistfulness of a thing not perfectly |he articulate, which means more than it can ever say, possesses more than it can ever impart, envisages more than it can
;
It is the beauty of the ruin, suggesting the of the unfinished statue, wonderful building that once was that should have been. suggesting the splendour
ever define.
for
Of course this conception must not be used as an excuse bad workmanship. It is in the essence of the conappeal to the imagination of
tract, so to speak, that this
others only begins to act when the artist himself has taken It is only the intensity of his imaginaall the pains he can. And that intensity tive effort which kindles ours into action.
will,
under normal circumstances, have made him work his
so happens that the greatest imaginings and of the human mind are beyond the greatest powers And the best artist, when of words or paintings to express.
best.
Only
it
(desires used the very utmost of his skill, is left at last dehe has pendent on the sympathetic imagination of others. If that
fails
him, he dies with his meaning unexpressed.
It is in this spirit of sympathetic imagination that
we
should read most ancient traditional books.

of fact,
And, as a matter
we
but we
generally do so. They are all markedly imperfect, hardly notice the imperfections. How few of us, for
instance, ever noticed that there were

of the Creation in Genesis before
two
different accounts
?
we were compelled
How
I
few scholars were troubled by discrepancies between Iliad
and
II ?
How
little
we
resent the half inarticulate quality
of ancient vocabulary and syntax ? Nay, we admire them. For the best things that these books are trying to express are not to be reached by any correct human words. With all the knowledge in the world at our disposal, we must needs sooner or later throw ourselves on the sea of imaginative emotion in order to understand or express these greatnesses. And the reason why we are willing to do so in these cases, and not in others, is, I think, ultimately the intensity of the
ix
THE APPEAL OF TRADITIONAL BOOKS

Helen
:
231
imagination behind.
of
The driving of Jehu, the weeping face these have behind them not the imagination of
one great poet, but the accumulated emotion, one

say, of the
may almost
and and
many successive generations who have heard learned and themselves afresh re-created the old majesty
loveliness.
r
They
are like the watchwords of great causes for

;
w hich men have fought and died

the
first
charged with power from
to attract men's love, but

of that love,
it
now through
the infinite
shining back
is
in
them, as
grown to yet greater power. There were, the spiritual life-blood of a people.
IONIA
THERE
is
X AND ATTICA
list
a well-known
of the seven cities
which claim
;
There are always seven to be the birthplace of Homer. but the names vary so that the actual claimants mentioned
amount
and
'
at least to ten.
'
los, Argos,
Athenae
' ;
Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, but instead of los we have Rhodos

' '
' '
'
Pylos ', instead of Salamis sometimes Ithake '. Now, without going into the rather transparent pretensions which have placed some of these cities on the list, we may notice two
points.
First, antiquity in general is quite agreed in regarding as an Ionian, and it knew the poems only in the Ionian dialect. Secondly, the two cities which have, in the
'
'
Homer
mere statement of the tradition, the strongest claim, are also the two of which we know that they were first Aeolic and 1 In only long after Homer's time Ionian Smyrna and Chios. both of these Homer was worshipped as a local hero. Thirdly, the two chief Ionian cities, Miletus and Ephesus, are never That is to say, the mentioned in the list of birthplaces. chief Ionian birthplaces prove, on examination, to be not and the tradition, even while it received and Ionian at all
:
read
its
Homer
in Ionian form, instinctively felt that the
spirit of Ionian civilization at its ripest
development was
alien to the spirit of
Homer.
The
1
traditional birthplace of
:
Homer
floats
from Ithaca to
the
for Chios are Find. Nem. ii. 1, and Schol. Apollo rv<t>\bs avrip, vaiti 5 X/o> ivi iraiiraXotcTay ; cf. Thuc. iii. 104; Simonides, fv 5c TO Kd\\iarov Xfos tttircv dnj/?, meaning Homer and quoting Iliad, Z 146 ; the anonymous Life of Homer. For Smyrna
The evidences
Hymn
to
a local sanctuary ('O^rjpaov) and statue Strabo, p. 646 ; Cic. pro Arch. 8; a native tradition which showed (and still shows in 1906) the cave by the Plut.' river Meles where Homer was born. See Proclus, Vita Hom. t and
;
'
Vita
Hom. Paus.
y
vii. 5. 6,
and
cf.
the
name
M.t
x
Colophon.
ties
THE RISE OF IONIA
233
His date varies from 1159, given by some authori-
quoted in Philostratus, to 686, the year assigned by the historian Theopompus. But he is never born in either of
the two greatest Ionian cities at the time of their power.
The
rise of
the Ionian civilization
is
in
many ways
the
most wonderful phenomenon in Greek history. Every kind of intellectual advance seems to have its origin in Ionia. The the first greatest works of colonization and commerce banks, the first maps, and the first effective Greek fleets come from there. The first prose 1 historian mentioned by
;
tradition
'
is
Cadmus
of Miletus
is
'
;
the
first
who has
real
substance and influence
Hecataeus of Miletus.
Greek philosopher is Thales of Miletus, are Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus.

a
The first the second and third

Consider for
the strangeness of this figure of Thales. Before the end of the seventh century, while the latest portions of
moment
still taking shape, Ionia seems to have been with the fame of this new kind of great man, not ringing a king nor a warrior, nor even an adventurous merchant
our Iliad are
prince, only a
cro<f)b$
avrip,
a wise
man
a philosopher,
who
; ;
has quietly rejected
all the myths about gods and theogonies an engineer, able to divert the river Halys from its course a mathematician and an astronomer, able to predict the eclipse which occurred on May 28, 585 B. c. And this man is not
persecuted like Galileo or Priestley, not dependent on powerful protection, like Leibnitz or Descartes. He is an acknow-
ledged leader of his people, a man to consult in crises, when other nations performed a human sacrifice or took the inarticulate
and dangerous advice

about 540
of a sacred snake.
A genera-
tion or so later,
B. c., just
about the time when
at the great national festival,

figure,
the Iliad and Odyssey were taken over to Athens to be recited we meet another strange Ionian
aColophonian
this time.
He is
a professional rhapsode
or reciter of epic poetry, whose zeal for the expurgation of Homer ' has become so great that he traverses Greece
1
See Kadermacher in Philol. Wochenschrift, 1907, No.
10.
234
denouncing the falseness and immorality of the very poems from which his own performances were originally drawn. All the myths are false. There is only one God, infinite, all Homer and Hesiod tell lies, intellect, without bodily parts.
'
attributing to the gods
all
that
among men
is
a shame and
a rebuke, thievings and adulteries, and deceivings one of another.' And another philosopher, not otherwise sympa-
Xenophanes, remarks in passing that Hesiod ought to be whipped '.

thetic to
'
Homer and
one must not suggest that the tone of these Philosophers represents the ordinary state of mind of the educated Ionian public. Thales and Xenophanes, and still more
Now
But the existence of an Heraclitus, were exceptional men. extreme view or a great advance of thought among a few
is nearly always good evidence for the prevalence of a more moderate view or a feebler advance among a much
people
larger
number. Before Xenophanes arose to denounce the moral atmosphere of the Epos altogether there had been many generations improving that atmosphere from within.
The spirit of expurgation, which we noticed in detail in the fth lecture, had been doing its best to remove the traces of
and brutishness from the heroes of Homer. Yet if it had its work quite complete. done for the gods what it did for the human beings there would not have been much ground left for the indignation
primitive cruelty
It could not
make
of
Xenophanes.
But there seems to be always a limit to these processes of ;expurgation and reform from within. A progressive nation with a rich legendary tradition must from time to time wake up to look upon its legends with fresh eyes. They are
regarded as something authoritative, unquestioned, indisputably edifying. And yet in them there are here and there
details
which seem hard to
believe, harder still to admire.
They are explained, allegorized, altered, expurgated. For the moment all is well. And then quickly there appears
another crop of
process
is
difficulties requiring
the same treatment.

of
The
repeated.
The amount
hard thinking and of
THE LIMITS OF EXPURGATION

in trying to
235
emotion which mankind has again and again expended

perhaps wisely
patch the fragments of some
great system of false beliefs, which often has nothing valuable about it except the emotion with which it happens to be
regarded,
is
one of the most profoundly characteristic things in
human
history. It was widely prevalent in Greece, especially after the classical period. But a moment is apt to come,
sooner or later, at which

so
men
begin to wonder whether after
jettison there is really anything true to save, whether a bridge so extremely full of rotten planks is worth such
much
repeated mending.
The point
at which this stage
is
reached
seems to depend on a certain proportion of qualities in the minds of the persons affected, the proportion between their
critical intelligence
and boldness on the one hand, and
their
reverence and depth of emotion on the other.
Now
Ionia
it was adventurous, and daring and self-confident. It was not, critical, scientific, rationalist, like Thrace, Crete, Athens, South Italy, a centre of religion or reactionary dreaming. It produced indeed some mysticism but a peculiar scientific and speculative mysticism of its own, more concerned with the properties of the Infinite
was
full
of intelligence
(rd antLpov)
than with the traditional anthropomorphic gods. 1
/
f'of
This scientific and critical temperament among the people Ionia was met by a special weakness in the Homeric religion.
^t was not really
[whom we find in whom we know from
The twelve Olympians Homer forming a sort of divine family, and

religion at
all.
statues,
do not represent the gods
worshipped by any particular part of early Greece.
They
represent an enlightened compromise made to suit the conveniences of a federation. Each local god had been shorn
of his mystical or
'
monstrous characteristics of everything, that was likely to give offence. And it is nearly always is, the mystical or monstrous elements of a belief which seem
;
that
have excited the keenest religious emotions of an ancient The owl Athena, the cow Hera, the snake-man people. the mystic the many ghosts and shapes of terror Cecrops
to
; ;
See Schulz, lonische Mystik.
236

who
:
some strange sense the beast which alive, and from whose blood our souls are made these things are cleared away from Homer's world, or else humanized and made to tone in with his general
bull Dionysus,
is in
he himself tears to pieces
serene anthropomorphism. This anthropomorphism happened to suit the art of sculpture, which became highly important
in Greece,
and
for that reason
among
others the Homeric
gods have dominated the later tradition. But the real worship of Greece before the fourth century almost never attached
itself to
those luminous Olympian forms. There were many of enthusiasm and outbreaks of superstition in but they all depend on deities of quite a different Greece,
ecstasies
:
sort.
There was enthusiasm for Orpheus and Dionysus enthusiasm for the mysteries of the Mother and Maid at Eleusis. There was religious feeling about the local preHellenic festivals, like the Thesmophoria. There was superAthens about the mutilation of the Hermae.
stitious terror in
But those Hermae were no images of the handsome young Homeric god they represented the old divine boundary whose unedifying form has been entirely expurgated stone, from the Ionian epos. The failure of Nikias in his retreat from Syracuse was due to reverence for no Homeric Artemis, but for the ancient and unhumanized holiness of the Moon. Even the goddess who led Pisistratus back to Athens, Pisistratus rbv Ô^ptK^rarov, was after all not so much the Homeric daughter of Zeus as the ancient pre-Homeric Athenaia Kore '. And the temple of Zeus, which the same Pisiin the spirit of his Homeric policy, proceeded to build stratus, with so much pomp, was left all through the classical times
;
'
went to Athena and Poseidon, the native Earth-Maiden and the native Sea. Of course Athens may have been a specially
unfinished.
All the treasures of Athenian building
c
but mutatis mutandis the same Pelasgian community observations could probably be made of any Greek town of
:
'
which we possessed adequate records. One can see then what was likely to happen to the Homeric gods. They had been made, up to a certain standard, very
COLLAPSE OF HOMERIC THEOLOGY
237
beautiful, highly anthropomorphic, not in the least poverty-
But in the process they hold on the worship of any particular had lost their special community. They had forfeited the powerful support of
stricken, barbarous, or grotesque.
uncritical local superstition
and, after
all,
in the eyes of
an educated and sceptical Ionian, would they quite bear thinking about ? This serio-comic Olympian family, with its permanent feud between the husband and wife, in behalf of which we can but lamely plead that the wife's unamiability is but the natural result of the husband's extreme unfaithful-
and the husband's unfaithfulness almost excused by the wife's monstrous unamiability ? The lame son at whom The pretty daughter, always in the other gods laugh ? scrapes and tears ? To a reverent spirit these things can be allegorized. To a scientific historian they possess an historical But to the critical Ionian, whose origin and explanation. are no longer blinded by the sacred past, who patronizes eyes
ness,
while he loves, they tended to take a curious form. It is it would a form hard to characterize or to understand
;
be hard even to believe credible, were

familiar
:
it
not so extremely
the form which reaches its highest, or perhaps I should say its lowest, point in Ovid, or before Ovid in the
The gods are not by any means rejected. They Âlexandrians. ,kre patronized, conventionalized, and treated as material for
brnament. Their traditional characteristics, roughly speaking, are preserved Zeus is royal, and Apollo is musical, and Athena
;
is
a warrior or a spinster and the late Ionian poets believe in them not much more effectively than Pope believed in the
:
sylphs
who
is
tire his heroine's hair in
the Rape of the Lock.
There
denial.
a depth of unbelief profounder than any outspoken Pope would not have troubled to deny the existence
it is
When you take the gods in such a spirit as this not worth while to furbish up their moral characters. They are more amusing as they stand they may even be,
of sylphs.
;
in a certain external
and shallow
matter
sense,
I think that in this
of the
more beautiful. Homeric or Olympian

There
is
gods one can notice three distinct stages.
a primitive
238
stage,

:
represented best by the earliest strata of Hesiod's a stage in which, for one thing, men did not use their critical faculties at all on this sort of material, and, for
Theogony
another, a great many of the myths which afterwards became shocking or ridiculous still preserved some remnant of their
original meanings.
At such a
time, for instance, the quarrels

still
have been felt consciously as part of the old and respectable feud between the conquered native goddess and the invading northern god. 1 Secondly, there is a long middle stage of expurgation, of rejection, of humanizing. This covers the greater part of Homer, and the best. And thirdly, there is the late Ionian stage of which we (have just spoken, in which the Olympians have ceased to have any genuinely religious significance, but serve to provide expedients to the story-teller, and afford material for a kind of half -licentious humour.
between Zeus and Hera
may
stage,
1
Presently, I think, we shall see reason to add a fourth that of the acceptance of the Homeric system by
non-Ionian Greece, a stage in which the more primitive Greek communities, beginning to feel uneasiness at the muddle and crudity of their own local superstitions, receive with
reverence and enthusiasm the comparatively orderly and civilized system of Homer. In the sixth century, when Ionian
culture spread in a great wave to the mainland of Greece, Ionia was probably already blasee to the theology of which
she was the chief centre.
And the Zeus whom Aeschylus from Ionia and Homer was a widely different being accepted from the Zeus of whom the men of Miletus made merry tales.
At the very outset of that interesting branch of literature which culminated in the Greek Novel, we hear of the Milesian Stories. Light tales they seem to have been, much in the style A typical one is the tale of the inconsolable of Boccaccio.
of Ephesus, who used constantly to frequent her husband's tomb from mixed motives partly from devotion
widow
to his
memory, partly because there was a fascinating young

1
J. E.
Harrison, Primer of Greek Religion.
x
soldier
THE MILESIAN SPIRIT

on guard
is
239
there.
The
first
collector of such stories
whose name
known
:
century, not the sixth. bear the same stamp
to us, Aristides, belongs to the fourth But two or three tales in Herodotus
among them some,
like that of the
wife of Candaules, which were certainly not first told by Herodotus. And besides, the very fact that Aristides called
his collection of story
like
c
'
Milesian Stories
'
was already recognized as Milesian.

'.
seems to mean that the type It was a name
Contes Gauloises
And
I think one can see this spirit,
a mocking, half-licentious, Boccaccio-like spirit, already at work in the later, and not the very latest, parts of the Iliad. We will take two detailed instances. But first, let us be
clear
about the
beings in
issue. As we have Homer always maintain
seen before, the

their dignity
human
1 respect.
No
hero
is
liar 1 or
a coward.
tortures his
or loose-lived or vicious.
None
and selfNone is drunken enemy. But the
gods
that
anything. nations have had a weakness in that direction

j
quite a different matter. They are capable of They not only practise torture the gods of most
is
but they lose
are cheated, beaten, imprisoned. They i lie and are found out. They are routed by human beings. ' Their father (They howl when wounded. bangs them
their dignity.
They
'
about the house
'.
That, you
may
say, is characteristic of
simple and primitive religions. Does not Ouranos swallow his children and again vomit them up ? Does not the Babyall
lonian Apsu, in the primaeval chaos, cut his wife Tiamat in two, to make one half of her into heaven and the other
into earth
?
Yes.
visibly allegorical, dependent in part of primitive language. The Homeric
Those are simple and savage stories, on the mere helplessness

that.
totally different
from
smooth and sophisticated.
They They mock with easy scepticism
passages in question are are not primitive, but
at the indecorousness of the primitive beliefs.
But
1
let
us take our two instances.
There was in Greece
Of course a disguised hero in the course of a dangerous adventure tells the necessary lies to avoid detection. That is in the essence of all romances
of adventure.
240
a widespread tradition of the Wars of the Gods. Zeus sonichow holds his power by conquest over other beings, vaguer,
older,
and darker shapes, belonging to some old
order, or,
hear of perhaps, to the chaos that preceded all order. treatments in early epic of the Titanomachia, Theomany
machia, Gigantomachia.
We
And
in our Hesiodic collection
we
have preserved, imperfectly and with many repetitions, due apparently to a conflation of two sources, a long fragment
of a Titanomachia.
It tells
how Zeus gained
the victory over
by freeing and calling to his aid certain primitive whom the Titans and Ouranos had oppressed (Theog. beings
the Titans
1
ff.).
617
Briareos and Kottos and Gues, their father Ouranos conceived hatred of them in his heart, being afraid at their wild valour and their looks and tallness, and he bound them in bondage deep beneath the wide-wayed earth. And there they dwelt in anguish under the ground at the ends of the great world, seated on the verge of things, a very long time, amazed and with great mournBut Zeus and the immortal gods, ing in their hearts. the counsel of Earth, brought them again to the light. by
Titans,
Zeus asked them to help him in the long war against the and they consented. The gods stood on Olympus
for ten years.
and the Titans upon Othrys and they had fought already So they joined battle
;
:
the Titans opposite had made strong their lines, sides put forth their might. And there was a terrible cry from the boundless sea, and shattering of the earth, and the broad sky groaned, and high Olympus was shaken from his foundations with the rush of immorand the quaking and the noise of feet upon tal things the steeps came down unto cloudy Tartarus. And the armies met with a great shout, and Zeus held back his fury no more. Down from Olympus and heaven he came in one sweep of thunders that ceased not and the bolts went winged from his mighty hand, and the life-
And
and both
If Briareos is a fifty-oared ship, as seems likely, he must have been introduced later into this story. But perhaps the Fifty-oar was rather identified with an already existing Briareos, and thus Briareos identified with Aigaion.
1
HESIOD'S
THEOMACHY AND
IIOMKITS
. . .
:>!
hearing Karth cracked with the burning, and around And forehim tlie fathomless forest roared in lire. most in that hitter stirring of hattle were Kottos anil Hriareos and (Uies, unsated of war, who east from their hands three hundred great stones, one on another, and darkened the Titans with their eastings, and drave them down and hound them in hitter bondage, for all their pride, as far beneath the earth as the sky is above the earth. For a bron/en anvil east from heaven would fall nine nights and days, and on the tenth night would come to the earth. And from earth a bron/en anvil would fall nine nights and days, and on the tenth night would come where about there is dri ven a hroir/cn to cloudy Tartarus fence, and around it Night is shed, Night in three Hoods. And over it the roots are planted of the earth and the
:
unharvested sea.
Now the
dispute.
It
exact merit of this as poetry may be a matter of may be a little incompetent, a little bombastic.
least,
Hut
it is
at
genuine and reverent.

is
If
we
are to describe
these primitive battles of gods, that which to conceive them.
the kind of
way
in
turn to the battle of the gods in a late Ionic part of the Iliad (4> 391 iT.)
:
Now
was shield- piercing Ares who began, and sprang upon Athena with his bron/en spear, and uttered a word of insult Wherefore again, thou dog-iiy, dost drive the gods to strife V Rememberest not the; day when thou didst let loose Diomedes to wound me, and thyself in sight of all didst grasp the spear and drive- full at me and tear my fail' flesh V Now I warrant me thou shalt So saying he made a lunge at pay for all thy doings her aegis tasseled and terrible, which not the thunder of
It
'
:
'
Zeus can make to

his long spear.
fall.
There bloody Ares lunged with
But she started back and caught up in her stout hand a stone lying upon the plain, a big black jagged stone, which men of old had put to be the boundary of a field and she hit Ares on the neck with it, and his
;
limbs gave way.

fell,
He
reached over seven furlongs as he
and his hair was filled with dust and his arms rattled about him. And "Pallas Athena laughed aloud, and boasted over him with winged words. Fool, hast thou
'
not learned yet

MURK AY
how
far I
II-
am
thy better, that thou wilt
242
dare to match thy strength with mine ? That is the way to fulfil thy mother's curses, who plans anger and mischief against thee for deserting the Greeks.'
Presently Aphrodite, who was in love with Ares, came and took him by the arm to help him up, while he made a great
groaning, and began gradually to
called to
'
come
to.
Hera saw, and
Athena
the poet has an affection for Here is that dog-fly to help Ares. that word Chase her So coming Athena, rejoicing in her heart, flew at Aphrodite, and drove her in the chest with her stout hand, and her limbs and her dear heart gave way beneath her. And there the two of them lay together on the many- nurturing
'
'
!
'
Earth.
Later on, towards the end of the battle, Artemis
is
facing
Hera
'
To her
'
in
wrath spake the reverend spouse of Zeus
What seekest thou, shameless she-dog, standing again*,, me ? ... So spake she, and with her left hand gripped
;
both the hands of Artemis by the wrist, while with her bow and arrows off her shoulders then with the bow and arrows whipped her about the ears, and laughed as she dipped her head this way and that. And the arrows kept dropping from the quiver. And the goddess full of tears fled like a wood-pigeon.
right she took the
'
One
of the
few passages in the Iliad* says Dr. Leaf,
which can be pronounced poetically bad.' True, yet the badness lies entirely in the taste, not in the execution. The
verses are admirably written, incomparably better than those of Hesiod's Titanomachia. But the poet was not writing about anything that he felt as real or as mattering much to any-
body's feelings. He was almost writing parody or mock-epic. And he made it quite pretty
!
Let us take another instance.

subjects of semi-religious
Among
the old traditional
Epos was one which our extant
remains of Greek literature leave rather obscure, the mystic marriage of Zeus and Hera. This may have been in its origin
a sort of marriage of Heaven and Earth, or of the two greatest
IEPOS FAMOS
243
divine beings, from which all things arise. It may have the union of the two races and two religions symbolized Zeus, the god of the Northerners, being united with Hera,
the Argive Kore.
It
may have
been one of those naive
recognitions of the mystery and divinity of the processes of life, which often shed such high dignity upon the external
grossness of primitive religion. Whatever its origin, it was a subject treated by divers poets with reverence and mystery,
as
we can
tell
by the
allusions in Pindar, Aeschylus,
and
of
Euripides.
Now, how is this subject treated

the Iliad
?
in the Fourteenth
:
Book
I might Absolutely in the spirit of Boccaccio almost say, of a Palais Royal farce. The passage is sometimes much praised, and is certainly admirably written radiant with humour, grace, and healthful sensuousness,' is the critic
:
But what is the story ? Its name is almost enough by ancient writers The Tricking of Zeus. The father of gods and men was sitting on the top of manyfountained Ida, watching the war. The gods had offended him by giving secret help to the Greeks, and he had arranged that the Trojans should win the present battle. So he went himself to sit on Mount Ida, and see that all proceeded as he desired. His wife Hera, a partisan of the Greeks, saw him
cism of Dr. Leaf.
:
it is
called
sitting
there
crrvyepos
6e
ot
'
!
how much
lord
she disliked
him
en-Aero Qv^ 'and thought She determined to outwit her
and master. So she went to her room, washed, anointed, and scented herself, and put on her best immortal raiment, Next she including ear-rings with three stones in them. went to Aphrodite and begged for the loan of her Cestus, or embroidered girdle, which acted as a love-charm. She
explained
reconcile
falsely, of course
how
she wished
it
in order to
an old married couple dwelling at the end of the world, who had unfortunately quarrelled Okeanosand mother
Tethys, in fact. Having obtained the Cestus, she proceeds to find the Spirit of Sleep, and with some difficulty, since the
affair is
dangerous, bribes him to come and be ready to charm the eyes of Zeus at a critical moment. Finally, she repairs
B2
244
to

Ida, to ask in
most dutiful language the permission of Zeus to make her expedition to Okeanos and mother Tethys. She does not like to go so far without her lord's approval.
Mount
Remember how much
that all this edifying story began by her thinking she disliked Zeus I can find no dignified word
!
to describe adequately her provocative conduct towards her victim. However, she succeeds in entirely engrossing his
attention,
and so rouses
his passionate
admiration that he
compares her favourably with no less towards whom he has entertained similar
forgets the war.
than seven other persons

feelings.
He
allies
quite
And Hera
sends a message to her

:
!
that
they can do what they like now Zeus is safe Now, were I required to subscribe half a crown to save
and all his children from everlasting do not say that I would outright refuse. In its own place this kind of literature has a certain value, and seems to But not have served as a stimulus to better work in others. all the riches of Egyptian Thebes could, I think, ever atone for the injury done to the human race by the invasion of this Milesian spirit into what is perhaps the greatest poem of the greatest nation of poets that the world has known. It has
Aristides of Miletus
death, I
defiled its
own
beautiful world.
'.
God, as
it
were, in the eye
slain the image of For the poets who actually

It
has
'
wrote these passages there is great excuse. Their cause was, perhaps, on the whole, rather a good cause than a bad. But
historical circumstances
the epic at the particular

of its glory, it
combined to catch and stereotype moment when, just after the zenith
had caught this mocking infection. Rightly towards the authorized gods and their legends, it sceptical had not the serious courage simply to seek truth and reject
falsehood in what are generally regarded as the highest regions of human thinking. It neither denied its gods nor re-made
them.
degraded them further, and used them for ornament and amusement, to make a good tale the merrier. I had almost written, to make a good tale into a bad one. When once this infection has crept into its blood, the Epos as a form
It
of living
and growing poetry was doomed.
FROM EPOS TO TRAGEDY
245
/ Consider what that meant for the history of Greek literature. /Greek literature starts from an immense wealth of Saga traditions, and the need of an instrument for expressing them
;
a metre, a style, a whole language almost. now that part of the Greek people which had done all And this for the sake of the Saga had outgrown the Saga, and
;
meet that need and a rare creation

to
it
created the Epos.
It
had been a
costly
was beginning to parody what
it
had formerly adored. 1
Had
onia been the whole of Greece, not only the Epos, but the whole heroic tradition, might have died during the sixth and But Ionia was not the whole of Greece, Ififth centuries.
Sjand
the Saga found a new utterance in Attic tragedy. always hesitate to use the antithesis of northern and native,
and pre-Hellenic, as applied to the whole of any concrete fact. The rule is that everywhere you find northern and native elements, but nowhere do you find a purely northern or purely native community. Yet in contrasting the Epos
or Hellenic
with tragedy that antithesis cannot but occur to one's mind. When the ancestors of the Aeolians and lonians fled across
the seas
a mixed set of races, chiefly under Achaean leaders
they were compelled, as we observed in the second lecture, to leave behind them their sacred places, most of their tribal
and family institutions, and notably the graves of their The prestige of the Achaean chiefs, the partial fathers. return to migratory life, the convenience of the Achaean institutions of the Saga and the Bard, combined to give to the Epos its prevailing Achaean tone. But on the mainland
1 Monro allows quite a large place to the mock-heroic in the second part of the Odyssey, Telemachus' sneeze which fffj.fpba\ôv novapijaf (p 542), the pigsty described in language borrowed from Priam's palace (13 ff.),
the
iroTvia nrjrijp of
the beggar Irus (a

'
5),
&c.
He
gives
some
fifteen alleged
instances in the index under
Parody
'.
Exactly the same spirit occurs in the Pelerinage de Charlemagne, which, however, belongs to a quite early and good period. See G. Paris, Poesie du M. A., i. pp. 119-49. It can be shown on other grounds to be connected with the neighbourhood of Paris (e.g. it mentions no towns except St. Denys, Paris, Chartres, and Chateaudun, with no word of Aix or Laon), and the critic regards its heroi-comic character as le plus ancien produit de
'
Perhaps the Demodocus lay, which looks exceedingly ancient, occupies the same place in Tesprit milesien '.
1'
esprit parisien
'.
246

all
of Greece during occupations were most tyrannous, there remained always some fragments of the old population, peasants and serfs and this time,
even where the northern
outlaws for the most part, who still clung to their old objects worship, their Earth-Maidens and their harvest magic, and especially their sacred tombs. A downtrodden people
of
many generations, worshipping by and in fear. But as the populations became more mixed, which was the case everywhere on the mainland, the result was that the old pre-Hellenic stratum of beliefs and emotions re-emerged. There was in particular a custom of performing rites round the tomb of a dead hero, narrating his deeds and his sufferings, invoking his return to earth, and in some cases assuming disguises so as to represent him. In even the latest works of the Attic drama you will generally
stealth
find in the central nucleus of the story a sacred
they must have been for
tomb. 1
In
this severe, earnest, keenly emotional atmosphere, touched with mysticism by the shadow of present death, the Greeks
of the
mainland kept up in their separate

local
cities
and
villages
fragments of the heroic saga. Now about this time of the decay of the Epos, Athens had thrown off her ages of Pelasgian slumber and was just
their
own
coming into intimate contact with Ionia. To her young and groping genius the high civilization and intelligence of Ionia, the magnificent form of the Epos, the broad sweep of Homeric pan-Hellenism, the clean and lordly northern spirit, came as a world of inspiration, and quickened the ancient ceremonials
of worship at the
tomb to the splendid growth of Attic Tragedy. Turn from that late Homeric story of the Outwitting of Zeus to the earliest, crudest, most incompetent tragedy which
1
This tomb- theory of the origin of tragedy is due to Professor Ridge way. will, I hope, soon be published by him ; see the Preface to the 1907 edition of my Ancient Greek Literature. There is perhaps an echo of the
and
truth in the Platonic Minos
It never Tragedy is an ancient thing here. began with Thespis, as people fancy, nor yet with Phrynichus. If you care to study it, you will find it a primaevally ancient invention of this Of all poetry it is tragedy that most satisfies the common folk country. and draws out men's souls.' Minos, 321 A. (An Athenian is speaking.)
:
'
x
we
PRE-HOMERIC SAGA IN AESCHYLUS
247
possess, though, in its way, one of the most beautiful, It is not only that the Suppliant Women of Aeschylus. there is a marked change of atmosphere, but it seems like
j
a change backward, not forward, towards an older, a simpler and a grander, world. The very first words of the play Zeus the Suppliant.' strike a keynote Zei)y p*v aQiKT&p,
'
:
Would any
of those clear-headed
Homeric bards have ven-
tured on that ancient phrase ? They knew of a Zeus who, on a far-off mountain throne, observed and avenged suppliants. But this Zeus of Aeschylus is himself the suppliant
;
the prayer which you reject is his very prayer, and in turning from your door the helpless or the outcast you have turned
away
It
the most high God. The belief was immemorially old. was doubtless in a thousand of its ramifications foolish and absurd. And the Ionic Epos had made all its beliefs sensible.
you a strange Aeschylean lyric about It is a story far too primitive and the tale of lo, the Argive maiden monstrous for Homer beloved of Zeus, who was turned into a cow, forsooth, and watched by the hundred-eyed Argos, and driven over the
I will venture to read
a deed of this same Zeus.

:
A cow-shaped, or even a cow-headed, world by a gad-fly And a cow-headed maiden beloved by Zeus To maiden
! !
!
a cultivated Ionian such conceptions must have belonged to the very lowest regions of Pelasgian folly. They had been
'
'
expurgated from
Homer
centuries back.
Yet out
of that
unpromising material Aeschylus extracts something which is not only genuine religious thought, but, to my feeling, even
somewhat sublime thought. The love of Zeus leads its object through unearthly shame and suffering to a strange and overwhelming reward. We cannot understand. But Zeus is bound by no law but his own supreme will. He has always his own great purpose, and he moves towards it by inscrutable
ways. I should explain that to the mythologist lo is probably one of the many shapes of the horned Moon, the wanderer
of the sky.
She was identified by the Greeks with the Egyptian Isis, and her son conceived miraculously by the
248

The speakers
bull.
with Apis, the sacred Egyptian are the daughters of Danaus, descendants of lo, returned to her native land, Argos, and praying protec-
touch of the hand of Zeus
tion
from
their pursuers, the sons of
Aegyptus (Suppl. 524
ff .)
Lord of lords, blessed among the blessed, of perfections most perfect strength, O happy Zeus, hear us, and let it be Shield us from the pride of man, whom thou righteously abhorrest, and whelm in the dark- blue deep our black prison-house. 1 Look upon the woman's cause look on the race born of old from the woman whom thou Be a rememdidst love, and make new the joyous tale. berer of many things, O thou whose hand was laid on lo. Lo, we are beings born of thy race, though sent from
! ;
this
land to dwell afar.
walk again in the print of ancient feet, where our the mother was watched, moving among the flowers meadow of kine, whence lo fled, sea-tossed by a burning pain, knowing not her desire, to pass through many tribes of men.
I
; .
Her wide wanderings are then
described, across the Helles'
pont, through Asia southwards, till she reaches at last the all-pasturing garden of Zeus, the snow-fed meadow visited
by the whirling giant of the desert-sand, and the water of Nile untouched by sickness '. Do you observe how deeply and simply serious it all is ? Aeschylus accepts the whole story. But because he is simpleminded and great- minded, and has not a grain of lewdness
anywhere in him, this old, superstition has become to and the spirit passes from He throws no veil over the
formation
is
barbarous, pre- anthropomorphic
him a great and strange thing

cow-shaped heroine.
the poet himself to his reader.
The
it.
trans-
poem
part of the mystery, and he emphasizes continues

:
The
that had then their habitation in the land, were shaken with fear at the strange sight, a Being agonized half-human, part of the race of kine and part of woman. They marvelled at the mystery. Who was it that brought her peace in the end, her the far-wandering, the afflicted, the gadfly-goaded lo V
their hearts
1
And men
i.
e.
the ship of their pursuers.
THE MYSTERY OF
He who [to whom
IO
249
ruleth through ages of unresting life, Zeus The unwounding years are as yesterday]. strength of a hand, the breath of a god, gave rest to her, and her heart flowed in a sad tenderness of tears. The word of true promise became a divine seed within her, and she bore a blameless child, through ages long perfect in happiness.
of gods shall I praise for works more justified ? Father, planter of the garden, worker with the hand, and Lord, thinker of ancient thought, great builder of our race, Zeus, whose breath maketh all accomplishment He hasteth not at the command of another. Being stronger than all, he maketh great the weak. None sitteth above him, and he honoureth none. And the deed and the word are present as one thing, to dispatch that end whereto the counselling mind moveth.
!
Whom
The story which Homer

of a theology higher
rejected has
or, if
become the
vehicle
than Homer's,
not higher, at least
based on deeper thought and involving the reconciliation of

vaster conflicts. The mind of Aeschylus was possessed by one of the problems, perhaps the most dreadful problem, of
human evolution. He sees the higher asserting itself gradually

over the lower in the process of years but he sees also, what blind their eyes against, that the so-called higher many people
;
more
often achieves its end at the price of becoming something evil than the wild beasts. It is good that the white man
;
should supersede the red and the brown but what things the white men have done in the process For Aeschylus the contest was probably present in two forms a conflict,
!
:
externally, of
Greek against barbarian, and in Greece itself, of what we may call Achaean or Olympian against Pelasgian '. Zeus was in each case the spirit of the higher power and
' ;
anything on earth specially typified Zeus, the new conqueror and orderer of heaven, it was the new Dominion of the Athenian Empire.
probably,
if
It
It
of
was unlike a Homeric bard to have such thoughts at all. was still more unlike him to express them in the language the Saga. He was too much of an artist. He kept his
250

;
poetry in one compartment

in another.
his speculation,
if
he had any,
But
for Aeschylus they are

trilogies
both one.
Two
of
Aeschylus'
earliest
seem to deal
explicitly with
this subject.
Both
trilogies are represented to
us by one
play each, the Suppliant Women and the Prometheus. In the two isolated plays which remain, the sympathy is entirely
on the side
of the
weaker
it is
for the suppliant
women
against pursuers, and for Prometheus against Zeus. Yet we know from other sources that in the complete trilogy the ultimate judgement was for the stronger, so soon as the stronger would consent to merge his strength in love. The
their
story of lo
is prominent in both plays. It is only loosely connected with the main plot, but it typifies in each case the
religious
like
meaning of the whole. Zeus did to lo what seemed monstrous wrong professing to love her, he afflicted
;
her and ceased not, and the end was that he brought her to a perfect joy which so she is perhaps at the end willing to believe could not be attained otherwise. And even while
Prometheus and lo are mingling their griefs against Zeus, it shown that a child sprung from lo is to be also the deliverer of Prometheus (Prom. 772, 871 ff.). That too is part of Zeus'
is
purpose.
We know Shelley's magnificent treatment of the Prometheus

Saga. Shelley was too passionate a friend of the oppressed ever to make terms with a successful tyrant, be he man or
god.
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound the prophesied catastrophe which is to hurl Zeus from his throne actually occurs, and the tormented Universe, awakening to a life of
In
peace and love, finds uncontrolled that inward perfection of

in Aeschylus
all-ruler
order which leaves no place for external government. But we know that the end was different. Zeus the
must always
rule.
Does not each one
of us
know, as
a matter of fact, that Zeus and not Prometheus is now governing the world ? But Zeus, who came to his throne by violence, learns as the ages pass that violence is evil. For all his
wisdom he grows wiser
still.
Nay,
it
seems that even from the
beginning, in his cruelty to Prometheus, as in his cruelty to
x
lo,
THE GIFT OF ATHENS
251
purpose was peace.
he had a great purpose in the depth of his mind, and that Prometheus is unbound, not by a turning
of the tide of war, but by the atonement, after ages of pain, after the suffering by which alone wisdom is born, of a noble rebel and a noble ruler. The Zeus who could be himself
most ancient legends forgave conquered Titans, was capable of this crownalso. I do not suggest that this solution is ing strength ultimately tenable or satisfying. But it at least represents intense thought, and thought naturally expressing itself in the medium of poetry. It is just this which Ionia never gave
a suppliant,
in the
who even
and
set free his
us.
It is peculiarly the gift of Athens.
a very imperfect and sometimes the life of Traditional Epic Poetry in 'inconsequent manner, Greece. We have seen the first fragments of what was after tried to follow, in
We have
wards the Greek race gathering behind their bare walls on and desert capes in the Aegean we have caught glimpses of ancient and diverse memories of tribal history, of great deeds, of rich palaces and mysterious kings, meeting and parting and re-joining again into the numerous heroic
islands
;
and the two, more highly wrought than the survive. -We have noted how, of these two one again was more Homeric than its companion poems, more carefully purified and expurgated, more tensely knit and gorgeously worded, while at the same time the heroic and ancient atmosphere was more sedulously protected from the breaths of commoner or more recent life. -We have looked
lost,
poems now
others, which
still
'
'
as best
we
could,
much helped by Hebrew

of
parallels, into the
estrange processes growth and composition which have made the Iliad what it is, and have tried to analyse some part of its poetical greatness. Lastly, we have seen how the races which built up Homer at length outgrew him, and found other subjects than the Heroic Saga in which to express their ideals and satisfy their intellectual thirst. Here we might well have ceased. But I think that the sharp contrast with
' '
early Attic tragedy
is
useful for the understanding of the
252

;
Epos
and
it is
;
a mere cessation
important to realize that its end was not 1 it was a change into something else.
have moved into a sterner land, more interested in into a language less beautiful, truth and less in romance a language more intellectual, more highly differentiated which has elements of hard prose mixed with its poetry, and has lost that splendid and careless gleam by means of which Homer was accustomed to set all themes in the world aglow. Homer's poetry was so easy, the sympathy was so clear, the imagination was roused so instinctively, that we must leave it with a sigh. And this new poetry is of a kind which will not yield its treasures without hard thinking, without somewhat intense and vigilant use of the imagination. The poets, for the most part, are no longer merely singing to please us, according to methods which have been tried for generations and proved effectual. They are men not exactly less cultured than the Ionian bards intellectually they are far greater but they are less accomplished. They are imaginatively nearer to the primitive earth-born tangle of desires and wonders. Their feet are set in places lower than Homer's feet their thoughts strive toward heights and obscurities which his poetry dared not penetrate. They have fought at Marathon, and their hands are re-shaping the w orld. The bitterness of truth is mingled with their dreams of beauty
;
We
the passion of men searching gleams through the stiffness of their majestic conventions. Conquerors of the Mede builders
;
of free
Athens
:
first
makers to the world
of tragedy
and
of
comedy it is a rare combination. But there begins the second great chapter
ture.
1
in
Greek
litera-
Professor Wheeler of Columbia University calls to my notice the very between the mocking boisterousness of the Ionic vaseSee also Mr. Cornford's paintings and the severity of the early Attic. remarks in Thucydides Mytkistoricus on the difference between the Ionic Herodotus and the Attic Thucydides.
similar contrast
APPENDIX A
THE PHAEMAKOI AND HUMAN SACRIFICE
As there has been a tendency of late, perhaps started by Rohde (Psyche, p. 867, n. 4), to make out that the pharmakoirite was a real human sacrifice in the full sense, it may be well to give verbatim the more important texts on which Rohde based his opinion.
I.
Ancient Texts.
:
(a)
Hipponax, several fragments

4.
7ToA.iv
especially
/2aAAeo~$at.
KaOaipew
/cat KpdSrjo'L
5. /3aAA.oi/TS ev Act/xaivi /cat pa7rtonres

Kpdftrjcn /cat o-KtAArjo'tv, aicrTrcp <a/ty/,a/coV.
6. 7.
Set 8*
avrov
5 <ap/xa/cov c/C7rooy(rao-$at.
/ca<?7 Tra/ocfctv
/cat
toâSas TC
/cat
/xaav
rvpov OLOV taOiOvoTL

77/005,
9. Xt/xa> yci/7/rat
</>ap/xa/co?
ev 8e
d^^cts
?TTa/cts
37. 6
8'
cfoAtcr^cbv t/ccrcvc rr)v
rr)v e7rra^)vXAov, T^V
[^
MSS.]
Trpo
TapyrjXioicrw
cy^vrov
These in any case prove nothing about Athens. Hipponax was over a century earlier than Aristophanes, and Ephesus was a town much exposed to barbarian influences. But, even as to
sixth-century Ephesus, the fragments prove only (1) that the Pharmakoi-sacrifice was a known ceremony, as for instance,
:
are
breaking on a wheel, hanging, drawing, and quartering, &c., known to us, but that Hipponax has to explain it. (2) That
*
some ceremony or other still went on which could be described like our own burning of beating of the pharmakoi Fawkes. (3) It is worth remarking that all these phrases Guy seem to occur in one context, and the same is true of the
as a
',
passages in Attic Comedy.
They
are all comic or rhetorical
254
curses.
APPENDIX A
Now
in such curses
it is
and more
effective,
to invoke
on all grounds more comic, an obsolete and imaginative
punishment on your victim.

illustrate this.
The curses in Aristophanes invoked Eq. 928 if., Adi. 1156 ff., or (Those the threats of Ran. 473 ff. have nothing to do with real life.)
(4)
No fragment
it is,
speaks of killing a pharmakos, and
fr.
37,
obscure as
speaks quite clearly of the dough figure in place a cake in a mould ; one of the a pharmakos. "Ey^vTov of substitutes for a real victim. regular
<
'
(b)
Aristophanes, Ranae, 732

tiKr)
olcriv
TroXis
irpb
TOV
ou8e
\
<f*apfjiaKOLcriv
paoYws fyprjo'aT
aV.
ledge of the existence of such a

a time.'
(C)
. .
This merely shows knowcustom ?rpo TOV, once upon

'
E%. 1135ff.
TOGO'S*
CJO-TTCp
SrjfJLOCTlOVS
Tp</>l9
CITO,
any one should take this as evidence for a pharmakos-sacrifice. Who would cook and dine on a pharmakos ? The Scholiast (V) explains rightly
.
Ovo-as eTTioWveis.
It is strange that
'
that (%u>o-ioi are animals kept and fattened at the public expense.
(d)
Eupolis, Demoi, 120 (K)

OV XP*i V
*V
T Ta^S TptOÔtS KOV TOt?
6vOvfJiLOl<S
TrpoarpoTraiov T^S 'TroXews Kaco"$ai Tcrptyora.
Hipponax.
practice.
(e)
Merely a comic curse perhaps a literary reminiscence of In any case it proves nothing about contemporary
;
Lysias
vi.
53.
'
The
right thing
Ko.1
would be
airaXXarroîvov^
/cat
Ai/So/aSov TI)V TrdXtv KaOaLLpcw

ttTroTre/xTrctv
'.
a7roStO7ro/A7rt(Tât
</>ap/AaKov
Comic abuse, as before. But observe that Lysias thinks of the pharmakos not as killed, but as sent away or
'
',
banished.
II.
Explanations of Grammarians.
:
A. Much the oldest, Ister Avo aVSpa? 'A^vô'tv e^yov,

roi9
apyryXtot?, cva ynev VTrep
in Harpocration, s.v.
8c virep
</>ap/>taK09.
Ka0apcria ccro/LtcVovs T^S TroXcco? ev
TWV av8pwi/ cva
rwv yvvaiK&v.
KCU
TO.
[Originally a
man named Pharmakos had

TWV
Trcpt
stolen cups from

TOIS
IcrTpos ev
Apollo and
VTTO
TOV 'A^tXXca KaTcXcvo"^?/.]

aTro/xt/A^/xaTtt
eo"Ttv.
dyo/Ava TOVTWV
a TWV
THE PHARMAKOI AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

Observe
:
255
they did not

; *
kill
'
',
they
led out
l
'
two people in
'
a procession and the ceremony was an imitation Such imitation' ceremonies were as to death.
common
of stoning as
can be in Greece.
(On the Achilles question
see Lecture
VIII
on Thersites.)
B. Helladius, ap. Phot. Bibl. 1593 Wos
KOV9
aye iv
6Yo, TOV /xev virtp
rjv cV 'A&?vat9 TOV 8c virtp yuvat/aov dvSpwv
KaOapubv dyo/AVov9.
TOV
It
Kat 6
8*
JJLCV
TWV dvfyxov /xeAatVas
to~^(a8as
rpd^Xov was an tt7roTpo7rtao-/>to5
*X V htVKQ'S
aVepo9* crv/3aKÔL 8c,
<f>r)<rw t
covo//,aorro.
voo-wv in
atonement
for the death of
Androgeos the Cretan. This writer agrees with Ister, except that he does not happen He probably took that for granted. to add that it was a /xt/xr;/xa. The imitation cannot have been very close, one would think, if some took it for a stoning, others for banishment, others for burning. Androgeos was killed in an ambush on the road We may conjecture that he in some way ySaXXd/êvos to Thebes. a7T 0ave. This would give the stoning, with /cpa&u and o-KtXAai then the banishment would be the running away of the real man the burning would be the burning of the ey^rov or effigy. Tzetz. Chil v. 726, C. Tzetzes on the Hipponax passages
/ :
in case of special calamity, rov Travrtov ap,op<f)6rpov ^yova> TOV TTpOCTÔpOV (TT^CTaVTC? TTyV OvfTlOV Ova" Lav' 19 TO7TOV
|
rc Sovrcs
T$ x
/^
Ka ^ /^
|
a1/
KC^ ta-â8a9,
1
7rra/as
yap
/cat
c/cctvov cts TO Tree?

raiv dy/otW,
|
o'KtXXat9
crvKals dyptat9 re
V ^vXot9 rot9 aypiois.
aXAot9
reAo9
irvpl /carcKatov
Kat
\
TOV
O"7ro8ov ct9 âAao*o"av cppatvov ct9 dv/>toi;9. 6 8c 'iTnrojva^ KT\. (fr.
49).
I do not feel sure

to KaTeWov.
i. e.
what object Tzetzes meant to be supplied Did they burn him or only it sc. TT?V ^vo-t'av the lyx^rov or effigy ? It seems to be distinguished from
i
'
',
cKctvov,
the
man who
'was led out
'
d>9
?rt
0vcrt'av,
as though to
But perhaps Tzetzes did not really understand the sacrifice.' source which he was quoting: he seldom did, being an inaccurate writer, 1500 years later. So far, then, there is no single statement that the pharmakoi even at Ephesus, much less at
Athens, were really

statements.
1
sacrificed.
But now we have two such
flower like a bluebell.
256
APPENDIX A
The first part of the note given in (a) Schol. Equites, 1. c. the best MSS. explains quite rightly OTÔO-LOV?- XeiTm fiovs rj Tavpovs. The Second says Irpcôv yap rivas 'A^vatot Xiai/ dyevi/ets
/cat
axprjO'Tovs
KOL
Iv
KatpuJ
<ru/x<opas TU/OS CTrcXôvcr^s
T^J
TroXei,
Xcya)
77
rotovrov TU/OS,
And
This note
(2)
ZBvov TOVTOVS cv/ca Tov KaOapOfjvai TOV presumably ate them, as we remarked above
!
(1) is
absent from
its
shows
itself
by
and V, the two good sources as belonging to a bad period of language

:
scholia,
e. g.
the
XOI/AOV, Xc'yw,
$ TOLOVTOV TIVOS
(3) is
obviously
wrong as an explanation of the passage to which it refers. (The note in the good MSS. runs: XctW fiovs 17 ravpovs $
aXXo
rt
TOLOVTOV
OvfJid.
Brjfjioo~Lov<s
Sc
TOVS
|
X^yo/xei/ovs
<âp/x,a/cous
OL7Tp KaOaLpovcrt
rets TToXct? TO)
avTci)v <ova>*
^ Tov?
orjp,o(Tia
KOL VTTO
first is
Trjs TroXews rpeô/xeVoi;?.
Of these three explanations, the

*
obviously right.
second, cleanse cities with their blood,' is It also occurs in Suidas, and probably did not begin life as a note on this passage. The third is right as far as it goes.
(6)
The
the so-called pharmaJcoi, who quite vague, as well as wrong.
Schol. Eanae,
733,
one inferior MS., C, has a note:

1-779
T0i>5
yap
<f)av\ov$ KOL irapa

r)
<i;cra>5
7TL/3ovXcvo/JLvov<s ets aTraX-
Xayryv av^/AOV
K-aâp/xara.
XI/AOV
rj
rivos
TWV rotovrwv
l^vov, ov?
c/caXovv
Exactly what one expects in

!
inferior scholia
which
abbreviate their sources
was
careless.
He may
It
is
says Wvov for short, because he have found Ijfiyov lirl Ova-Lav or rjyov d>5
it
He
cVt Ovo-tav.
subject or date
ol 'Atfr/vatot it
is
not necessarily false as given to Wvov but even

;
stands, since
no
if it said
Wvov
TOT*
would be worthless.
to
'
The general result is come to the same type
show
that
(1)
the ancient texts
all
He
ought to be tied
on a cart and
burnt in a bonfire like a Guy.' They imply that a pharmakossacrifice was known to have existed at some time somewhere
they suggest that some
(2)
/xt/x^/xa
of
it
lived on.
/xt/x^/xa
The
best grammatical tradition explains that this
did exist, and partly

(3)
what
latest
it
was
like.
The worst and

'.
grammatical tradition, dropping the

is,
qualifying clauses as its
manner
says that
'
they sacrificed
of
very ugly people Even without the
general
considerations
probability
THE PHARMAKOI AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

advanced in the text of Lecture
to the Thargelia
I,
257
ceremony being a ^rjâ.

as
this evidence clearly points [Cf. also Stengel
ff., and especially Farnell, Oults, iv. 270 ff. charms for ripening figs, see Paton in Revue </>ap/x,a/<oi' He argues that Adam and Eve Arclieologique, 1907, pp. 51 were pharmakoi.]
in Hermes, xxii. 86
On
the
ff'.
We give in full the Pelopidas story, which has actually been used as evidence that the Greeks of the fourth century had no
objection to
human
sacrifice.
Plutarch, Pelopidas, xxi. (Before the battle of Leuctra, B. c. 371. Pelopidas was encamped near the grave of certain
Virgins who had been, according to the tradition, violated by Lacedaemonians. They had died, and their father had com-
mitted suicide upon their grave.

6
A fearful and
haunted place
!)
Pelopidas dreamed that he saw the Virgins wailing about their tombs and uttering curses upon the Spartans, and their
father
commanding him
to sacrifice to the
Virgins a fair-haired
Maiden if he wished to conquer the enemy. The shocking and unlawful (Seivov KO! irapdvopov) command started him from his sleep, and he consulted his prophets and officers. One insisted that the dream should not be neglected or party disobeyed, producing precedents from ancient times, Menoikeus, son of Creon, and Macaria, daughter of Heracles' [both of these devoted themselves voluntarily], and in a later generation Pherekydes the wise, who was flayed by the Lacedaemonians and his skin preserved by the kings, according to a certain oracle and [a mythical divine king, like Frazer's Marsyas],
'
'
Leonidas,
who
in a sense sacrificed himself for Hellas
by the
of an oracle, and further the men sacrificed by These Themistocles before Salamis to Dionysus Omestes.
command
actions
had
all
been approved by subsequent success.

;
On
the other hand, Agesilaus had led an army from the same the place as Agamemnon and against the same enemies
goddess demanded of him the sacrifice of his daughter, and he saw the vision while sleeping at Aulis, but refused, and
through softness disbanded the expedition, which was glorious and incomplete.
in-
258
k
APPENDIX A
The others opposed such
a view. No superior and more beings could be pleased with so barbarous and unlawful a sacrifice. It was not the legendary Typhons and Giants who ruled the world, but one who was a Father of all gods and men. As for spirits (Sat/xoj/e?) who rejoiced in the
than
human
blood and slaughter of men, to believe in such beings at all was probably folly, but if they existed, they should be dis-
Weakness and badness of regarded, as having no power. nature (i/^x?) was the only soil in which such monstrous and
grow and last.' The arguments on both sides are interesting. The first set shows what was possible to reactionary and superstitious individuals at a time of great fear. The others speak the
cruel desires could
language of ordinary philosophic Hellenism.
APPENDIX B
TORTUEE OF SLAVE WITNESSES
THIS bad business
overstated.
is
sometimes misunderstood and grossly
who are suspected of concealing important facts has only in comparatively recent times been abolished in England and France. In Athens this
The
torture of witnesses
the case of slaves.
in the case of freemen, but not in that a slave could not give evidence at all except under torture is absurd. He could of course give evidence to a simple fact, e. g. where he witnessed a murder.
sort of torture
was forbidden
To say
And, in a complicated
case, Isaeus, Philoct. 16,
seems to speak of
a proclamation inviting evidence from relations or slaves. The cases where a slave's evidence was not good except under
where the slave had an obvious interest, such as personal complicity or fear of his master. The typical case is where a man is accused of some misdoing which his
torture were those
household must have
known about. In such a case the Court cannot seize his slaves and examine them without the master's consent but the Accuser can challenge him to hand them over
;
for
examination under torture. The master, if he accepts this and if the proposal, can stipulate what tortures are to be used
;
TORTURE OF SLAVE WITNESSES

Court
inflicts
259
any permanent injury or any temporary loss of working power on the slave, the Court, or the Accuser, as the case may be, has to pay damages. To Koman or mediaeval torturers such a stipulation would have made the whole
proceeding nugatory.
It is worth observing that (1) This challenge seems (2) To accept it implied not generally to have been refused. only a consciousness of innocence, but a strange confidence in the affection of your slaves. One would expect a slave in such a situation to accuse his master of everything that was desired,
:
he could acquire freedom thereby, if his evidence (3) I can find no case mentioned where a witness died under torture. Where torture is really severe such cases seem to be frequent, from heart failure and other causes. It looks as if this was one of the numerous cases in which Attic Law preserved in the letter an extremely ancient power which was not much used, or at any rate not to its full extent. It is (The scene in Frogs 620 if. is perhaps instructive.
especially as
was
believed.
real cruelty.)
unpleasant and of course unjust, but does not suggest much The article Semis in Smith's Diet. Antiq. seems
very sound.
APPENDIX C
THE THALASSOCRATS
THERE
is
extant a very curious and ancient Greek document

fall
which throws some

followed the
light directly on this Dark Age which of the Aegean empires and indirectly on the growth of the Epos. It is a list of the various powers which have exercised what the Greeks called Thalassocratia ', or
i
Rule of the Seas, from the fall of Troy up to the founding of the Athenian League. The list is given by Eusebius with slight omissions and discrepancies, both in the Chronographia and 1 the Canones, and was taken by him from Diodorus. It bears well the tests that have been applied to it, and seems to be
also
See the historical reconstruction by J. L. Myres in J. S. xxvi. 1 Fotheringham's criticism in J. H. S. xxvii and Myres' answer. Winckler's discussion is in Der Alte Orient, vol. vii, part 2.
s
260
APPENDIX C
drawn from authentic sources, perhaps from a list set up in some Aegean temple. The list starts with the fall of Troy. That catastrophe, by w hatever coalition of invaders it was immediately produced,
r
is
taken as typifying the
final
downfall of the old Aegean
system, a system which in Greek tradition is represented by the ancient thalassocratia of Minos. But what exactly is meant by a thalassocratia, or control of the seas? It seems
to mean something quite definite, not a mere general naval preponderance, because the dates of the various controls are marked off so precisely. Professor Winckler considers that it
* '
was an actual title conferred by the far-off King of Assyria But I fully agree with upon his vassals in the Aegean. Mr. Myres' criticisms upon this view. The explanation is,
I think, to be found in the peculiar geography of the Aegean, and in the distinctive character of the great Aegean centres. They were (pp. 36 ff.), generally speaking, fortified toll stations
:
the various cities of Crete

routes
;
i
'
commanding
all
;
the southern trade
Thebes the traffic Troy those of the Hellespont and even Mycenae, which seems so its three seas between remote, some important trade routes between the Aegean and the Corinthian gulf. And the Aegean is so formed that both to the north, the south-east, and the south-west the necessary The whole of routes of trade are well marked and narrow. them together could be controlled by a really strong sea power, though it is not likely that an ancient command of the seas was often so complete as that. When one reflects on the amount of fighting which went on in historical times for the possession of, say, the Hellespont or Naxos, and the constant train of explosive maritime rivalry, ever ready to burst out in commercial wars, such as that between MiletusEretria- Athens and Chalkis-Samos-Aegina, the conclusion strongly suggests itself that the prize in each case was the control of one or more of these five or six great passages or toll stations of the Aegean, and that such control constituted A power became completely thalassocrates thalassocratia as soon as it could establish a guard of ships and forts at, say, the Hellespont, the channels of the Cyclades round Naxos or
;
1
'
'
'.
THE THALASSOCRATS
261
Delos, the passages on each side of Carpathos, and on each side of Ogylos, together with certain roads of more local trade, like
the Straits of Euboea.
Now,
if
we turn
to the List of Thalassocrats,
we
find at the
very outset two phenomena which we might well have expected. First, for a long time after the fall of Troy there seems to have
been no thalassocracy at all and secondly, it is a very long time indeed, certainly 400 years and perhaps 600, before The Fall of Troy there is a genuinely Greek thalassocracy.
;
was dated by the authors of the list viz. the tradition represented by Eusebius-Diodorus-Eratosthenes at 1184 B.C.
The
list
then runs l
Maeones 92 years 85 Pelasgi

Lydi
et
Cares
?]
years
Lesbii
Thraces
Rhodii
79
23
Phryges
Cyprii
25
33 or 23 45
?
Phocaeenses Samii Lacedaemonii

Naxii
Eretrienses
44
17
2
10 15
10
Phoenices
Aegyptii
Milesii
60 ?
18
Aeginetae
list
Now
the dates at the bottom of this
can be verified.
The Aeginetan thalassocracy certainly ended in 480 B. c. We work from 480 B. c. backwards, and find a considerable though of course a steadily decreasing amount of historical confirmation as we go. There are one or two confusions,
notably a grave one at Nos. 10 and 11, the Carians and Lesbians. These two powers have, in the first place, no specific
time of duration attached to them and, in the second place, there seems to be very little room for either. But whatever we do with these confused places, it is practically impossible to
;
stretch out the dates given in the

historical period
1
list
between the
fall
of
so as to fill the whole Troy and the invasion of
figures.
I take the figures from Mr. Myres* list, marking the more uncertain The textual criticism of the list is highly complicated ; see
Mr. Fotheringhani's article. He considers on purely textual grounds that Eusebius' text gave Aegyptii 43, Cares 61, and Lesbii perhaps 68. The last two figures would then be mistakes on the part of Eusebius or his authority.
2(U
Xerxes.
APPENDIX C
On
Mr. Myres' arrangement there
is
a gap at the
to
beginning, directly after the

or 138 years.
Trojan War, amounting

is
128
On any
are
plausible system there

to
about a century
it
missing.
Now what
we
make
of this
gap?
I suspect that
Aegean empires there was no power strong enough or well enough organized to command much of the Aegean beyond its own shores. Mr. Myres thinks that the Carians have been transposed in the list. They are put tenth, where there is no room for them they should have been first, where they are wanted. There is evidence in Diodorus for this suggested rearrangement, and But I would suggest that if we it is quite likely to be right.
;
really is a gap,
and that
after the fall of the old
interpret the language properly a Carian thalassocracy at that date is probably the same thing as no thalassocracy at all. These race names are apt to be loosely handled, as we saw in
Lecture
II.
the word Carian
Diodorus and the Greek historians frequently use to denote the aboriginal or pre-Hellenic
inhabitants of the Aegean in general. Any rude and weak creatures whom you drove out of an island were roughly
described as Carian.
v.
Take the most
explicit passage, Diod.
84:
After the capture of Troy the Carians increased and became more powerful at sea getting possession of the Cyclades they seized some for themselves and drove out the Cretans who were settled there, while they occupied others in common with the Cretans who were there before.
:
Afterwards when the Hellenes increased, it befell that most of the Cyclades were colonized, and the barbarous
Carians driven out,
suspect that one might put words, thus:
I
that
statement
in
other
After the fall of the Minoan or Aegean empires, under the influence of the northern invasions, the first effect was not that the northern invaders began to control the seas. They were not advanced enough for that. It was that the subject populations in the islands began to raise their hoads, and especially formed a small piratical power in the Cyclades. The guards of the local Minoan forts, being cut off from their base, were faced with two
THE THALASSOCRATS
alternatives.
263
They either resisted to the uttermost and Or they made terms with the natives, and eventually sank to their level. When the Greeks came
perished.
into
existence as a people, they found the Cyclades inhabited by populations who were a mixture of the uncivilized Carian-Lelegian-Hittite natives and the isolated remnants of the Minoan settlements.
first
The
thalassocracy mentioned on the
list is
that of the
Lydians and Maeones. Possibly some federation of the coast people of Asia Minor arose, under the protection of Lydia, for
It is nearly resisting the piracy of the Carians in the islands. a century later that we find the first suggestion of a thalassocracy of Northern invaders, and even that is ambiguous. The
Pelasgians, however, are probably the definite tribe of that name, the tribe which raided Boeotia during the Trojan War,
and, taking to the sea,
made
and
race,
Crete.
They
at
any
rate are succeeded
settlements in Lemnos, Attica, by a real Northern
left traces in the Maeander valley, Naxos and Attica, as well as in Boeotia and Phocis. From what we know of the Thracians in historical times it is difficult to suppose that their control of the seas amounted to more than vigorous piracy. Next comes the first glimpse of somethe Khodians are thalassocrats thing that seems Hellenic from about 800 B. c. for the short space of twenty -three years. But was Rhodes at that time a Hellenic island ? The settlement of Rhodes is attributed by Greek tradition to a very early period, perhaps to the end of the eleventh century. Wandering Dorians, people from Megara in two relays, people from Crete and from Argos, seem to have joined hands there. And it is quite likely that when Rhodes began to use its geographical
the Thracians,
who have
in
position, holding the south-east gate of the
actually to be called a Hellenic power.
Aegean, it deserved In any case, it could
not long stand, arid no other Hellenic power could support or even succeed it. There follow Phrygians, Cyprians, Phoenicians,
The Cyprians were Egyptians, covering some 160 years. scarcely Hellenic at this time, and the rest are plain fidpfiapoi, though we happen to know that the Egyptian sea-power
depended a good deal upon
Greeks,
it
'
Ionian and Carian
'
ships.
The
seems, could supply the ships and the fighting
264
material
;
APPENDIX C
they could not yet supply the permanent basis and But that step was easy to take. And when organization. became distracted by the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar Egypt
in 604, the centre of gravity
changed from the mouth of the
Nile to the harbour of Miletus, and the Aegean for many Milesians 18 years centuries to come remained a Greek sea. Lesbians 4 Phocaeans 44 Samians 17 Lacedaemonians 2
; ; ; ;
;
Naxians 10
Eretrians 15
Aeginetans 10
and then the
Athenian Empire.
APPENDIX D
HUBRIS, DIKfc
AND HORKOS
ethics of early of disapproval

far
',
THIS central idea of Aidos has various ramifications in the Most of the Homeric words Greek poetry.
mean something
like
'
excess
',
or
'
going too
and imply that there are points where a man should check The wicked are aTaaOaXoL, outrageous,' V7reprj<l>ai>oi, himself. overweening,' acWot, 'away from Dike/ justice or law: most That word is the antithesis of of all, wickedness is "Yfipis. crtofypcxrvvY) and of cuStos, and like its antitheses it defies translaIt unites so many ideas tion into our forms of thought. which we analyse and separate and it has a peculiar emotional thrill in it, which is lost instantly if we attempt to make
'
can understand it, I think, in this way. Aidos or Sophrosyne, which is slightly more intellectual implies that, from some subtle emotion inside some ruth or shame or reflection, some feeling perhaps you,
careful scientific definitions.
We
of the comparative smallness of your own rights and wrongs in the presence of the great things of the world, the gods and men's souls and the portals of life and death, from this
emotion and from no other cause, amid your ordinary animal career of desire or anger or ambition, you do, eveiy now and then, at certain places, stop. There are unseen barriers which a man who has Aidos in him does not wish to pass.
HUBRIS, DIKE
man
AND HORKOS
:
265
Hubris passes them all. Hubris does not see that the poor or the exile has come from Zeus Hubris is the insolence of irreverence: the brutality of strength. In one form it is a sin of the low and weak, irreverence the absence of Aidos
;
in the presence of something higher. But nearly always it is a sin of the strong and proud. It is born of Koros, or satiety of being too well off'; it spurns the weak and helpless
'
of Dike
spurns,' as Aeschylus says, 'the great Altar (Ag. 883). And Hubris is the typical sin condemned Other sins, except some connected with by early Greece. definite religious taboos, and some derived from words meaning
its
'
out of
'
path,
'ugly' or 'unfitting', tives of Hubris.
seem nearly
all to
be forms or deriva-
What
relations are there
between this group of ideas and
the other great conception of Dike, Justice ? These, I think. That Dike is itself one of the bonds which Aidos enables you
to feel.
Dike in
done
'
its earliest
stages seems to
mean
'custom,
or normal course'.
to be
which normally is 'supposed under given circumstances, that which a man

It is that
If your neighbour takes one of you will naturally apply to the judges to make the man give it back, with perhaps something extra for That is what is always done what you have damages. a right to expect. If the judge, having received bribes from your neighbour, refuses to hear you, then you are aggrieved that is not Dike, not the normal course. The judge has no Aidos. The people, and the gods, will feel Nemesis. The other earlier word for Justice, 0e/us, seems to have the same history. Both words constantly mean dooms or judgements which are given or are expected to be given in a known and normal way. But 'Themis' seems rather specially to be connected with the keeping or breaking of Oaths.
'has a right to expect'.

cattle,
your
'
',
',
False Swearing, though
it is
not mentioned in Hesiod's
list
of the five deadly offences, is in general one of the most tj'pical and most loudly cursed of ancient sins. And its relation to
Aidos
is
very close.
Horlcos,
The word
'a fence', or
which we translate an
oath, really
'something that shuts you
in'.
means The process by
200
APPENDIX
J)
which the oath becomes important is this. You make to man some statement or promise, and then he requires some a TrtVrt? to make him feel confident, an op/cos TrtVrts, some o/o/<os to fence you in. The simplest form of Horkos and according to Medea (Eur. Mcd. v. 21) the greatest, is simply to clasp With more formality you can, both of you, call upon hands.
a
'
',
the gods, or the daimoncs

their presence
who happen
them
to be present in the air
Or you can ensure And, instead of being satisfied with the general Nemesis which these divine witnesses and judges will feel if the word is broken, you and your friend can specify the exact punishment which the gods
about you, to witness the spoken word.
by
calling
to a sacrifice.
upon you if you fail. That is the Horkos, the which binds the speaker. In general, covenant by oath belongs to a form of society which cannot enforce its judgements. It is ultimately an appeal to Honour, to Aidos. Of course priests and prophets may thunder about the vengeance which the gods will exact for a breach of the covenant which
are to inflict
'
sanction
'
but that sort of vengeance has in all ages they witnessed of the world remained a little remote or even problematical.
:
The
importance is that there is no vengeance by and no available human witness. The man who has men, sworn is really face to face with nothing but his own sense of Aidos, plus a vague fear of gods and spirits, who are for
real point of
the
main
part only the
mythology.
The thing
same Aidos personified and wrapt in that makes the perjurer especially
I
base, or di/atS^, is precisely his security from danger. once a perfect case of the simplest Horkos. certain
knew
Egyptian wished an Englishman to take a quantity of antiquities to The Englishman accepted Europe and sell them for him.
the trust, and drew up a full catalogue of the articles, with a list of the prices which he might expect to get for each of them. The Egyptian shook his head at all this complication
you will shake my That handshake was the Horkos, the fence or bond. A man who broke through such a Horkos would be di/cuS?/?, a shameless or ruthless man. It is just what Jason did to Medea.
of securities:
'I
would
like,'
he
said, 'if
hand, and say you will be
my
brother.'
267
APPENDIX E
THE PSEUDO-CALLISTHENES
THE MSS.
sented by
of the
Greek version of the Alexander Eomance,
attributed to Callisthenes, fall into three
main
classes, repre-
(Paris, 1711), of the eleventh century.

tically
This version pracof Julius
agrees with the Latin Translation Valerius, made before A. D. 340, and the
Armenian
translation
made
in the fifth century.

A. M.
B
C
(Paris,
1685
bearing date
6977
L,
=
is
A. D.
viated.
(Paris,
The good Leyden MS.,
1469), abbreof this class.
113 Suppl., bearing date
A. D. 1567), greatly
expanded.
As a mark of difference we may take the point that inserts the Greek campaign between i. 41 and ii. 7, awkwardly making the connexion by inserting KaKtlOev oûô-ev ets ra /jieprj TWV fiapfidpwv Sia rfjs KiAiKt'a?.
B and C put the Greek campaign at i. 27, but give different accounts of it they then insert an abbreviated repetition of the same events at i. 41. The Greek campaign is evidently
;
in both cases an interpolation from another source, the connexion.
and breaks
The
differences
between these various
classes of
MSS. cannot
be illustrated except in large extracts. They are tabulated in K. Miiller's introduction, pp. x. ff., in his large edition of
Arrian and Callisthenes.

the various translations.
Still less
can the differences between
But
a short passage taken from
two
MSS.
of
the same class, and thus closely resembling one
another,
may
be instructive.
is
a passage (i. 18) as it appears in Paris C and Subjoined Barocc. 17, showing the freedom with which the scribe treats his original. The scribe of Barocc. 17, for instance, prefers to the chariot race at Rome by the temple of Capitolian Zeus, put
instead of Pisa and Olympian Zeus. And he uses his own in narrating the conversation between Alexander and his fancy
father.
The passage
is fairly typical.
268
APPENDIX E
crvvrjXiKUDTwv avrov
o~vi/(ov,
Mia ovv TU>V fjfjicpwv 'AXe'âvSpoo" /xcra TCOV

'Ei/ fj,ia
Xoyovcr tv
ovv TO>V
rjfjicpwv
yutcra TO>V
^XIKKOTWI/ aurov crvvwi/, Xoyovo" CK

to~
Xdyowr 7rpoTtVavTo~,
cicnjkcpeTai Xdyoo", wo~ ore
IltVav appear rjXaTOv<rw ol
Xdywv
TrpoTetvdvTwv,
ot io-<e'peTai Xdyocr, wo- OTI ev 'POJ/AT/ a/o/xarryXaTOvo-tv
8oKijJn*)TepOL T(t)V ySacrtXcwv TratSeo", /cat TCO viKô-avrt
a$Xa
StSovcrtv
CXTTO
rov OXv/x-
v8oKtfjui)Tpoi
Trtoi;
TWV âcTtXecov
TTatSeor /cat
TW
vt/cT/cravrt
a^Xa Stôrat Trapa TOV KaTre-
Atdcr* ocr 8* av ?/TT?^tV, Trapa, TOJV vtKr/craVrcov âvarovrat.

rjTTrjOelor
Tavra
ravra
aKoua'acr
d/covcrao"
rwXtou Aider. *O 8c
Trapa
rail/ vi/cô'ttvrtDi'
âvaroiSrai.
'AXcai/S/)oo- cp^crai Trpocr ^>iXi7T7rov
Spo/xaioo-, /cat cvpi'o-/ci

fy>o/xai<xr,
avrov tvKaipovvra
'AXeâvSpocr Ip^crai
/cat Kara(f>i\r]0-a<T
Trpoo"
rov ?rpa avrov
Kat
CTTI-
avrov
CITTC-
Harep, Scofuu
a)
crov,
Xcyci* Aco/Aat (rov,

rpci^di/ /xoi
/ocoorov,
t(T
8eoT7rora, ra> ev e/xot
KaraOvfuov
TrXrJ-
Ilicrav TrXcva'at CTTI TOV dyaiva ra>v 'OXv/XTTtwv, eTrctS^ dya>vi'o~ao~$ai

l
Kat TO dp/JLO^wv Trapao"\6jJievoor

i.
aTrdcrTeiXdv /xoi ev Pw/xr/ apfjLarrjXaTrjo'aL.
'O 8c ^tXtTTTTOO"
cTTTC TTpOCT
aVTOV
Kttt TTOtOV OLO~/C^/Xa (XO'KT/O'aO' TOUTOVO"

0*01),
eyef
a>
^Sia d?ro
Trar
oroi
o~oi
O^TTW
yap
o~ot
oySoov
CTOO*
ov (nry^wpai
/?ovXci; ou o"uy^wpci>
TOVTO
TOVTO
The upper
sthencs, pp.
line
cod. Barocc. 17.
throughout is Paris C, the lower the Bodleian See much longer extracts in Meusel, Ps.-Calli-
794
ff.
worth remarking that the commonest errors in the Callisthenes MSS. are those which come from mere misspelling. If the pronunciation came right the spelling mattered little. The book was essentially the prompt-book of an oral storyIt is
teller.
I have not met with Noldeke, Bcitrage zur Gesckichte dcs Alcxandcrromans (1890). The Syriac and Ethiopic versions have been edited with great learning by Budge (1889 and 1896
respectively).
He
points out that
much
of the material is of
immemorial
1
antiquity.
For instance, Etanna, a Babylonian
i.e.
give
me my
Should be
TOVTOV.
share of the inheritance. 3 Via

i
Far be
it
from thee
'
!
THE PSEUDO-CALLISTHENES
hero, rode on an eagle
Bel, rested,
269
up to the gods. He reached Ann Ea and went on towards Ishtar, but the eagle grew faint and fell. This story was then attached to the Assyrian-Accadian Gilgamesh, to Bellerophon, and at last to
and
Alexander.
(Ps-Kall.
ii.
41.)
APPENDIX F
STAGES OF OLD FKENCH POEMS: ROLAND
AND
ST.
ALEXIS
NOTE ON LA CHANSON DE EOLAND.
TAKEN chiefly from Gaston Paris 's Introduction to his little book of Extraits (8th edition, Hachette, 1905). The history of this traditional book can be made out in more detail and with more definite evidence than that of any ancient Epic.
'
?
We find
I.
the following stages

historical event.
A. D., Charlemagne, the young was returning from an expedition in the North of Spain, where he had been received in various cities, but shut out from Saragossa. When his main army had passed the Pyrenees, the rear-guard with the baggage was
The
In 778
King
of the Francs,
surprised by the Basques in the valley of Koncesvaux and cut to pieces. Among the slain were the Seneschal Eggihard, the
Count of the Palace, Anselm, and Hrodland, Count of
of Britanny. famous, because of the language of an historian who wrote only He mentions the engagement, and adds sixty years after.
:
'
We know that
this disaster
the March became immediately
extremi quidam in eodem monte regii caesi sunt agminis
quorum, quia vulgata sunt, nomina dicere supersedi.' (Life of Louis 7, in Pertz SS. ii. 608.) The epitaph of the Seneschal Eggihard has been discovered, and shows that the battle took Apart from the epitaph, Eggihard and place on August 15. Anselm have disappeared from fame. Koland was a Breton, and we often find that the Breton songs have more vitality
than others.
270
APPENDIX F
is
Such
the Frmikish account, confirmed in
most
respects
by
Ibii-al-Athir (thirteenth century, but drawing on ancient sources). He, however, attributes the attack to the
that of the
Arab
Moslems of Saragossa, not to the Basques. It would seem most probable that the Moslems organized the attack, and
instigated
pp. 3, 4.)
II.
the Basques.
(Gr.
Paris, Legendes
du Moyen Age,
The
earliest poetical account,
as IiCT.
That
is,
a state of the
a source which we may denote poem represented by the
These are (1) the Norman-French poem, Eoland (E), of the eleventh century (2) the prose chronicle which bears the name of Archbishop Turpin (T), and narrates these events in chapters xxi-xxix (early twelfth century) (3) a Latin poem, Carmen de proditione Guenonis (C), which is of the same epoch, but represents an earlier state of the poem than our extant MSS. (i. e. than any extant form of K). EOT, then, represents the poem as it was before these various versions had made their different modifications of it.
elements in three extant sources.
; ;
common
According to KCT Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans, has conquered all Spain except Saragossa, which is held by the brothers Marsile and Baligant, under the suzerainty of the Admiral of Babylon (Babylon seems to mean Bagdad if so, this is a memory of
:
'
'.
the very ancient suzerainty of the Eastern Caliphs over Spain.) He sends Ganelon to demand their submission. Ganelon is
bribed,
Saracens.
and promises to betray the best French warriors to the He returns to Charles, announces the submission of the brothers, and induces Charles to return to France,
leaving behind him, as rear-guard, the best of his barons, including his nephew Roland, Count of Le Mans and Blaie, Oliver, Count of Geneva, and 20,000 Christians. These are attacked
at
Eoncesvaux by 50,000 Saracens, led by Ganelon.
The
first
army corps of 20,000 Saracens is destroyed by the French. Then a fresh body of 30,000 Saracens destroys the French, Eoland blows his horn and except Eoland and a hundred men.
rallies
the
hundred,
Eoland
kills Marsile,
who pursue and rout the Saracens. and then proceeds to die of his wounds.
STAGES OF OLD FRENCH POEMS

He
bids farewell to
it.
271
liis
peerless sword, Durendal, and tries
through the marble on which he strikes it. Then, to warn the main army, he blows his horn again, so loud that it bursts the veins of his neck. Charles hears the horn and would return, but Ganelon persuades him that Koland is only hunting. Presently there
in vain to break
It cuts
arrives Baldwin, Roland's brother, with news of the disaster. The army returns, to find Roland dead ; also Oliver, and others. There is a great lament. Charles pursues the Saracens.
Night
is
that he overtakes
all
approaching, but a miracle retards the sun, so them on the bank of the Ebro, and kills
that are
left.
Ganelon
is
accused of treason.
There
is
an
Tierri ordeal; Pinabel fights for Ganelon, Tierri for Charles. Koland is buried kills Pinabel, and Ganelon is torn in pieces.
in St.
Komain de
Blaie, while his

is
horn
is left
at St. Severin
in Bordeaux.
Oliver
buried at Belin.
Charles returns to
to
Aix and,
III.
after a time, dies.
source
EC,
i.
e.
the story
common
Carmen,
but not to Turpin.

Baligant
lias
is
Various changes have
Eoland and the been
introduced.
at Saragossa.
Ganelon
Roland:
it
was
disappeared; Marsile reigns alone provided with a motive of spite against Roland who recommended the Emperor to
The send Ganelon on the dangerous mission to Marsile. battle is even further embroidered, and the description of the
countiy made marvellous.
The
Tivelve Peers of
Charlemagne
are introduced, Roland being their chief. They slay twelve similar Peers of Marsile. After the second battle with the
pagans a third Pagan army comes up. The French are reduced to sixty. There is no Baldwin. It is the horn that brings Meantime Oliver is slain, and Roland Charlemagne back.
and Turpin are the sole survivors of the French army. The Saracens flee. Roland collects the bodies of the twelve peers, and brings them to the dying Archbishop to receive the last Roland faints from his wounds. Turpin, in an blessing. effort to fetch water, dies. Roland recovers and folds Turpin's hands in a cross upon his breast, and pronounces a regret over him. Then he faints again. A Saracen returns and tries to take Roland's s\vord, Durendal, at which Roland recovers
272
APPENDIX F
;
consciousness and breaks the Saracen's head with his olifant or horn. He tries in vain to break Durendal says a long
farewell to all that he loves, dies, and is transported to heaven by angels. There are some slight variations in the final scenes
Ganelon, for instance, is ecartele on the spot. IV. The extant Chanson du Roland, or R, composed shortly after 1066. In this version Marsile is made to take the
also.
initiative in offering his submission to Charlemagne, and sending hostages. It is in answer to this embassy that Charles sends Ganelon to Saragossa. Roland offers to go as messenger himself before suggesting Ganelon, who is in this version his
pardtre his uncle by marriage and has a grudge against him in consequence. Ganelon is corrupted by the Saracens on the
Saragossa. Nevertheless, on arrival he delivers defiance just as in the old versions, though the defiance has now lost all raison d'etre. At the beginning of
way
to
Charles'
the battle Oliver sees from a hill the vast hordes of the
Roland from Saracens, and urges Roland to sound the horn. pride refuses a fine scene, which has a pendent later, when
;
Roland wishes
Oliver
is
to
sound the horn and Oliver dissuades him.

in the older versions,
more prominent altogether than

is
and Roland
betrothed to his
sister,
Aude.
When
Marsile
is
taken prisoner and dies, his queen Bramimonde, who, like other Saracen princesses, admires the Christians, is taken back
and happily baptized. After the burial of Roland, and Turpin at Blaie, Charles returns to Aix, and there Oliver, holds a solemn trial of Ganelon. This part is worked up. Ganelon intimidates and bribes the judges. They acquit him. At last one of them, Tierri who is now Tierri of Anjou ''
to France
takes the office of accuser upon himself, fights Pinabel, and hands Ganelon over to his punishment. Charles is about to rest
after his labours
when
and orders him forth to another expedition

Eire
',
the angel Gabriel appears in a dream, to the 'land of
to
succour the king Vivien in

'
'
Imphe
'.
So comes the
'
!
famous ending: Deus dist

'
!
si penuse est ma vie Reis, Pleurut des oilz, sa barbe blanche tiret.
li
. .
Ci
fait la
Geste que Turoldus decline!.

V.
273
R, another
large interpolation in
It.
A little later than
poet had made a song in which the revenge after Roncesvaux was more crushing. Marsile is the vassal of Baligant the brother and the Admiral of Babylon of the early sources com-
bined into one person. Summoned to the aid of Marsile, Baligant takes seven years to arrive, and appears just in time He challenges to rally the Pagan forces after Roncesvaux.
Charles to a supreme battle between all the forces of Christianity on the one hand and Paganism on the other. This gives rise
to
columns of the armies of Baligant, which forms an interesting parallel to the Homeric
a
'
'
Catalogue
of the
thirty
Catalogues (Roland, 3217-65).

Historical
The
' ;
list
can be divided into
and Imaginary peoples
but the Historical peoples
are those against the Christian powers were fighting, not at the time of the Crusades, but during the tenth and
whom
'
eleventh centuries
(Gaston Paris in Romania,

loc.).
ii.
pp.
330
ff.
or
L. Gauthier's note to Roland, ad
That
is,
the interpolator
has not described the Pagans of his own day, but has drawn from an ancient list of Pagans, which happens to be even
earlier than the poem to which he was adding. The Christians of course win, and Charles, sustained by an angel, slays Baligant. VI. The Rimed Version and later forms. The above versions,
IV and V, are best represented in the Oxford MS. of the Roland (MS. of the later twelfth century poem about seventy years earlier), though they are also extant in a Venetian
;
MS.
of the fourteenth century,
and various translations into
verse, &c.
Norwegian prose (twelfth century), German verse, Netherlandish But the most important point in the succeeding
history of the poem is the Rimed Version of the later part of the The poetical taste of the period had moved twelfth century. from assonance to rime, and the old poems written in assonance
were changed throughout.
new
history, the various
This is the opening of a whole rimed remaniements reaching down
to the sixteenth century.
and the succeeding (In assonance the last accented vowel vowels, if any in each line must be the same ; in rime the last accented vowel and all succeeding vowels and consonants thus thui in assonance we can end successive lines with Turpiws,
:
274
APPENDIX F
dit, ci,
lam,
murir (Eolcwd,
xcv), or sages, armes, holies, cheval-
cJient).
A further change in form was the adoption of the Alexandrine,

or twelve-syllable line divided in the middle, instead of the old ten-syllable. The Alexandrine derives its name from the
French version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, a metrical romance written in 1184 by Lambert li Cors with the assistance of Alexander of Paris. Examples of the changes in text produced by the introduction of rime and Alexandrine are given below, from the St. Alexis.
first
ST. ALEXIS.
Vie de St. Alexis,

cles
poeme du XIe
siecle, et
XII
e
,
XHIe
et
XIVe
siecles.
renouvellements Gaston Paris et Leopold
Pannier, 1887. This book contains four successive versions of the same
poem, showing
of taste.
its
growth and
its
adaptation to varying periods
I.
Eleventh century: assonance: probably chanted in church.
ert e justise et amor, Si ert credance, dont or n'i at nul prot Tot est mudez, perdude at sa color
feit
i
;
Bons Quer
fut
li
siecles als tens ancienor,

:
Ja mais
n'iert tels
com
fut as anceisors.
Al tens Noe et al tens Abraham, Et al David, que Deus par amat tant, Bons fut li siecles, &c.
This
may
be translated
Good was the world in the time of old, Surely faith there was and justice and love, So was there belief, whereof now there is no profit (?). All is dumb, it has lost its colour, Never shall it be such as it was to those of old.
And
In the time of Noah and in the time of Abraham, of David whom God the Father loved so much,
Good was the world.

II.
275
Middle of twelfth century
work
of a popular jongleur.
Still in
assonance, but greatly interpolated.
[Signour et dames, entendes un sermon home qui Allessis ot non, Et d'une feme que il prist a oissor, 1 2 Que il guerpi pour Diu son Creatour, Caste pucele et gloriouse flour, Qui ains a li nen ot convercion
D'uii saintisme
;
Pour Diu
le
fist,
s'en a
bon guerredon
Saulve en est F ame en ciel nostre signour, Li cors en gist a Rome a grant honour.] Bons fut li siecles au tans ancienour
Quar
fois
ert et justise et
amor, &c.
(as in
I).
The
largest interpolation comes,
characteristically,
at
the
romantic
moment where
his betrothed
Alexis has to relinquish and convert a persona muta in the old text here 30 verses
;
are expanded into 245.

III.
text,
Eimed
but
version.
Twelfth century.
assonances
changed
to
rimes.
is
Based on the old This sometimes

very close to
its
causes great disturbance.

original.
The opening
arriere, au tens anchienors, Fois fut en tiere et justiche et amors Et verites et creanche et douchors Mais ore est frailes et plains de grans dolors. Jamais n'iert teus con fut as anchissors. Ne portent foit li marit lor oissors, Ne li vassal fianche lor signers. .
:
Cha en
Au Au
tens Noe et au tens Moysant, tens David cui Dius par ama tant, Bons fut li siecles, &c.
(Observe Moysant instead of Abraham, for the sake of the

rirne.)
teenth century. a passage which

I say
l
IV. Alexandrine version, in monorimed quatrains. FourThis version is based on III, and opens at
is
about
1.
14 of
I,
1.
45 of
is
II,
and
1.
20 of III.
II.
about
1
'
since the actual line
not in I and
It is
oissor
wife.
guerpi
relinquished.
276
APPENDIX F
in -a
introduced in III in the process of running a laisse of assonances and -e into one long laisse of rimes in -ant, joining on to Moysant above.
The process
is,
of turning the ten-syllable lines into Alexandrines
of course, child's play.
En Fhonor Diu
Ki nos crea
merely becomes
le glorios poissant trestos a son semblant, &c.
Ens en Fonneur de Dieu

Qui nous fourma
le
et fist trestous a
pere tout puissant, son semblant, &c.
it
The peculiar critical value of the St. Alexis is that we have in four distinct stages corresponding to four styles of French
epic taste.
APPENDIX G
EXPURGATION IN THE HYMN TO DEMETER
Homeric' expurgation extended to the Homeric as is illustrated by the Orphic papyrus of the second century B. c. recently published by Buecheler in Berliner KlussiJcertexten, v. 1. (See also an article upon it by T. W. Allen,
l
THIS
Hymns
also,
in C. R., xxi. 4.) The papyrus quotes, as IK TU>V 'Opê'ws CTTWV, several passages from the Homeric to Demeter, in the following incident. a slightly different shape. Notably Demeter, disguised and acting as Nurse in the house of
Hymn
Keleos, is secretly making the child Demophoon immortal by soaking him in fire. The mother, Metaneira, discovers her Demeter, putting him in the fire, and shrieks with horror.
in the Homeric Hymn, takes the child out of the fire, puts him on the ground (254 f.) and then turns in anger on the Mother: Blind and witless are men, knowing not the portion of good
'
when
it
cometh nor yet of
evil.
And
thou too hast got thee
EXPURGATION IN THE HYMN TO DEMETER

!
277
a .huge hurt by thy follies So hear me the Horkos of the Gods, the unrelenting water of Styx, I would have made thy
son deathless and ageless for all days, and made undying honour to follow him but now, I swear, he shall not escape Death and the Slayers In the Orphic' or non-Homeric version there is nothing about Demeter taking the child out of the fire. On the when she gets to the words 'he shall not escape contrary, Death and the Slayers it proceeds So saying, ...(?) ing the child she burned it and slew it, and proclaimed herself/
; ' ! *
l
',
(KCU TO TraioYov
TTI
era (?) /ceuet /ecu otTTOKTetVei KOI 6p$oas avrrjv
Stayopevct).
i.
And
fJLV
exactly the
same story
7TU/OOS
is
given by Apollodorus
fj
4.
5 TO
/3p<j)0<S V7TO
TOV
dvaXw^T/,
#01
8*
There can be
the older and
little
hesitation as to
original.
which
of these versions is
is
more
The whole myth

was
first
based on
a ritual of child-sacrifice.
a real sacrifice, later an imitation. And similarly the upos Adyos connected with it first narrated how the goddess herself had burnt a child in the
It
fire,
as a primitive god, when disturbed, naturally would ; then, as that became repulsive, how she had put a child in the fire with good intentions and taken it out again. The child so saved is, one may conjecture, the origin of 6 a<f> ecm'as TTGUS so often mentioned in connexion with the Mysteries, 05 avrl
Trdvrwv
4.
5.
rail/
fjLvovjjiwwv
a,7ro/xtXt(7crrat TO $etov.
Porph. dc Abst.
(See Parnell, Cults, iil. p. 352, note 209.) process would contradict all analogy.
The
reverse
This throws light on another point. have long observed that those parts of the Demeter cult which struck unsympathetic observers as obscene have no place in the Homeric Hymn, while
We
Orpheus by Clement and Arnobius fr. 215). It was just conceivable that they (Abel, Orphica, have come in as a late degradation of a rite which in might Homeric times was pure. But now it is pretty evident that they must go along with the primitive barbarity of the childsacrifice. They belong to the things expurgated from Homer. For (See Mr. Allen, (I.e.) who still inclines to the other view.
they are quoted from
*
' '
'
the probable explanation of Baubo, see Diels, Arcana Cercalia,
T 3
278
APPENDIX G
Palermo,
in Miscellanea di Archcologia dcdicata al Prof. Salinas.

1D07.)
for
The expurgations of some ancient critics, especially Zenodotus, which we generally laugh at them, are merely continuations E. g. Zenodotus on IT 93-6, and of the Homeric spirit.
story,
I
apparently the whole Koine together with Aristarchus on the
Phoenix
of
458-61,
Sosiphanes
objected to
what was
aTrpeTre?,
on 453, &c. They which was quite in the spirit

i
Homer, supposing the standard of
unseemliness
'
to
be
the same.
INDEX
Achaeans, 40, 43, 45
168 if., 181 f., 195 Adrastus, 70, 193 ff.
ff.,
66
if.
ff.,
Ba'al, 113.
Achilles, 31, 34, 35. 70, 81, 130

f.
Bards, 167 f. Bellerophon, 124, 161 Beloch, 33.
f.
Aegean
races, 29, 39; sea, 50, 260. Aeolis, 202ff., 206. Aeschylus, 5, 87, 122, 151, 247 if.,
et
Be'rard, 33, 36, 98. Bethe, 33, 168, 180, 192, 195, 198.
passim.
Agamemnon,
197.
32 35,46. 119, 183f,
Blood, sacrificial, 59 ff. Boeotia, 49. Book, Traditional, Lect.
iv.
Ahmad
Ai'SoIof,
bin Abubekr, 95.

85
f.
Bosanquet, 137. Boshefh, 112 f.
Aias, 31, 35, 168, 186, 216.
Bouphonia,
61.
80-8. Aidps, Alcinous, 117. Alexander the Great, 99

listhenes.
Breal, 133, 153, 170, 218. Briareos, 218, 240.

Briseis, 181
;
f.
cf.
Cal-
Bronze and iron, 146. 'Bronzen Men,' 137 ff.
Alexandros, 195-7. Alexis, Vie de St., 274 Allen, T. W., 164, 276 Altars, 149 f.
Androktasiai, 192ff.
ff.
Budge, 268. Burial and Burning, 71

Burns, 221. Burrows, R. M.,
142.
ff.,
147
f.
f.
33, 41
f.,
137,
Andromache, Apamea, 22.
125, 196.
Bury, J. B, 35, 190. Butcher, S. H., 92, 176.

4.
Apollo, 47, 65, 68, 71. Apollonius of Kitium,

'Apaio?, 86.
Cadmus,
;
33.
Archaism in Pentateuch, llOf. in Homer, 111.

Arete, 57. Areteres, 70, 150. Argos, 31. 184.
Callisthenes, 98 ff., 267 ff. Carpenter, Estlin, 93. Catalogues, 98, 164, 168. Cauer, P., 154. Chadwick, 47, 72, 183.
Aristides of Miletus, 239, 244. Aristophanes, 1, 20, &c. Aristotle, 18, &c. Armour, 137-47. Artist's view of life, 26. Asceticism, 27. Assyrians, 15, 22, 260.
Cheyne, 50.
Chios, 53, 232. Chronicles, Arabic,
of,
98
f.;
spirit
154
ff.
Classicism,
Classics,
6.
meaning
of,
ff.
Colophon, 53.
Athena, 47, 66, 173. Athenians, 2. 50 law, 20 251 f.

;
spirit,
|
Comedy, New, 18. Commerce, Aegean, 36

Condorcet, 24.
ff.
280
Conway, 41, 42. H 75. li>7 Cook, Corinthiucti, 102.
INDEX
Fiction in
F.
Homer, 156-9, Lect.

f.
viii.
Fotheringham, 259
Frazer,
Cornford, 26, 252. Creon, 32.

Crete, 30, 32, 41, 137, 142, 192. Cruelty, 22, 117f. Cyclops, 179. CypHa, 122, 158, 164, 170.
J. G., 45, 73, 75.
Galen,
4.
Ganymedes,
116.
Dark Age, 29, 51, 55. David, 114, 130. Dead, the, 68, 71 f. cf. Minos, and Deification, 129
;
Lect.
viii.
Gauthier, L., 94. Gibbon, 46. Girard, P., 187. Glaucus, 191. Gods, Tribal, 47, 65 f., 181-99; and zoomorphic, 128, 235 men (see Kings), 128 f. heroes of battles, 199 f; Homeric, 235 ff.;
;
;
Deiphobus, 197.
Delos, 173.
battles
of,
240
ff.
ff.;
stages
ff.
in,
237
ff.
in Aeschylus, 248
Demeter, Hymn to, 276 f. Demolins, 46. Deuteronomists, 57, 114, 135.
Grammata, 94
Greaves, 139f. Greek people, 39
Deuteronomy,
57, 101
f.,
163.
89
f.
and Roman, and Hebrew, 176.

;
Dicaearclms, 3. Dictys Cretensis, 186.

Diels, 276.
Hammurabi,
107, 151.
f.,
Harrison, Miss J. E., 43, 46

69, 73, 82, 183, 238.
61,
Dike, 265.
Diodorus, 2, 262 et passim. Diomedes, 185, 188 ff.
Dionysius, 2. Dionysus, 26, 162. Disturbing influence, in ancient history, 109-15, 158 f. Dorians, 40. Dorpfeld, 147.
Driver, Canon, 50, 104, 163. Diimmler, F., 180.
Hector, 31, 118, 131, 196 f. Helbig, 154. Helen, 32, 197, 224, 231. Hellenism, 9 ff., 25, 130. Hera, 76, 238, 243. Herodotus, 2 et passim. Heroes, (see Dead), 69 f., 128, 181 ff., 199 f. Hesiod, 62 f., 78 ff., 85 f., 120, 127,
240.
Hippocrates, 4. History in Homer, Lect.

Hittites, 42.
viii.
Earle, S. M., 213. Education in Homer, 133

"EAif, 63. Elohist, 102-115.
f.
126 f. Ephesus, 53 f, 232.

'Eypcapoff,
Hoffmann, 0., 44. Hogarth, D. G., 54. 137. Homer, 91; name of, 209;
pass-im.
et
Homeridae, 228.
Horkos, 265
Hubris, 265.
f.
Epideiktika, 111.
Epigoni, 34 f. Eumelus of Corinth, 162. Euripides, 17, 20, 47, 87. Evans, A., 34, 73, 137, 148. Expurgation in Pentateuch, 11115; in Homer, Lect. v; in Hymns,
Houses in Homer, 152
f.
Human Sacrifice,
131, 253
ff.
12-16, 22, 121-7,
276
Idomeneus, 46, 119, 192.

Iliad,
f.
meaning of name, 166

it is,
;
what
Farnoll, 75, 121, 128, 257, 277. Fick, 42, 44, 203.
169
recitation of,
;
;
171
ff.
ments
in,
elesubject of, 199 f. 201 f. language of,
INDEX
composition fire similes, 213 ff. Iliad, the Little, 166.
; '
281
f.
;
203 209
ff.,
214, 227
;
criticism of,
of,
',
ff.
210
Milesian Stories, 238 Homer, 241 ff.
tone in
225.
Iliu Perns, 118.
Imagination, 222 ff.

lo in Aeschylus, 247 f. Ionia, 53 ff., 55, 172ff.,
Minos, 32, 46, 127. Minotauros, 127. Cf. 34. Mohammed, 107. Moloch, 112.
Monro, 152,
206
f.,
165, 204, 227, 245.
233
ff.
Mosso, A., 142. Mulder, 133, 169.

Mflller, K., 100, 267.
Iphigenia, 121 f. Iron Age, 78 ff.

Isaiah, 68, 163. Isocrates, 1.
Muses, 67, 98.

Mutilation, 72.
Mycenae,
31, 36.
Jahvist, 102-15. Jehu, 223, 231.
Myres, J.L., 34,40, 122, 138, 152, 259 f.
Jendeus de Brie, 93.

Jensen, 43. Jeremiah, 163. Jews, 15.
Josiah, 102, 131.
Nemesis, 80-8. Niebelungenlied, 179 Noack, 154. Noldeke, 268.
f.
Normans,
106, 156-8.
45.
Judges,
Book
of,
Northerners, 40, 45 ff. Nostalgic de la boue, 10, 129.
K, 145, 165.
Kings, Book of, 163, 223. Kings, divine, 22, 126 Minos, Agamemnon,
Sacrifice. Korai, 73.
ff.
Cf.
Odysseus, 31, 35. Odysxey, 122 ff., 145,
HQet passim.
sec
Human
Olympian gods, 205, 235; Gods in Homer.

Oracles, 71. Originality, 219
f.
Kretschmer, 42, 44.
Lang, A., 94, 137, 154. Leaf, W., 63, 128, 146, 154, 164 f., 218, 242 f. Lemnos, 54. Levantines, 23. Lizards, sacred, 68.
Local worships, 135, 198, 235 Logos, 92. Lycurgus Thrax, 162.
Mackail,"41, 210, 225.
f.
Orpheus, Hymn to Demeter, 276 f. Othin, 47, 72. Ox, sacrifice of, 59 ff.
P.,
writer in Pentateuch, 103-15.

ff.
Paganism, 8
Paley, 170.
Panathenaea, 171
ff.
Mackenzie, 138, 154. Margoliouth, 103, 107. Marriage customs, 150 ff., 204. Marsyas, 22. Matnlinear systems, 45, 74 ff. Mayer, 129.
Meister, 186.
Panhellenes, 134 f., 172. Panionia, 171 ff. Papias, 93. Paribeni, 142. Paris see Alexandros. Paris, Gaston, 100, 245, 269 Paterson, W. R., 121. Paton, 257. Patriarchial systems, 74, 77. Pausanias, passim. Pegasus, 162.
:
ff.
Melanippus, 70, 196. Menelaus, 32, 197. Meusel, 100, 268.

Mice, sacred, 68. Migrations, 39 ff., 45
ff.,
Pelasgi, 40 ff. Pelerinage de 245.
Charlemagne, 175,
65
f.
Pelopidas, 15, 257 f. Pelops, 12, 46, 129, 183
f.
282
Pentateuch,
;
INDEX
Sexual expurgations, 116.
Shield, 11 Mycenaean, 138 Skutsch, 41. Slavery, 16 ff., 87, 259.
;
101-15 interpolations in, 176. Phaestus, 192. PharmaJcoi, 13ff., 186, 253 ff. Phrixus, 70.
Phrygians, 44.
Piety, 78. Piracy, 51. Pisistratus, 171 ff. Plato, 1, 17 et passim. Platt, 214. Plutarch, 14, 62, 257.
f.
Smith, Robertson, 59 ff.. 123, 148.
Smyrna, 207, 232. Sophocles, 85, 86 et passim. Sophrosyne, 27 f. Sources of Iliad, 164ff.
Stengel, 257. Stesichorus, 202. Stones thrown in battle, 142. Strabo, 53, 127 et passim.
Tantalus, 46, 184. Taurus, 34.
Poetry, 7, 23 Hebrew, 155. Poisoned arrows, 120 f. /W/>, 11, 56 f.

;
Polybius,
2, 19.
Pulyxena, 121 f. Priam, 31. Progress, If. 23 Prometheus, 250

1
ff.
f.
Telamon, 37, 187. Telemachus, 160. Temples, 148 ff. Thalassocrats, 259
Thales, 233.
ff.
il/joorpoTToios
86.
Protagoras. 20. Pseudo-Callisthenes,
99
ff.
and
267
ff.
Thebes, 33. Themistocles, 14. Theognis, 133.
riroXi/rop&H, 49.
Theomachia, 241.
life, 26.
Puritan view of
Quotations in
Thersites, 185 f. Thorex, 143-5.
Homer and
Penta-
Thucydides, 2
Tiryns, 31.
et
passim.
f.
teuch, 163ff.
Ivadurmacher, 233.
73, 14s. KVichel, 137, 140, 146, 149, 154. Religion of the Polis, 57 local, 135; Homeric, 135. Rich men in Homer, 89. Ridgeway, 40, 43, 140, 146, 246. Robert Guiscard, 45. Robert, K., 140, 154. Rohde, 253.
;
Ramsay, W. M.,
Titanomachia, 240 Tlepolemus, 190.

Tophet, 15, 112.
Torture expurgated, 117 f. Traditional Books, characteristics of, 225 ff., and Lect. iv.
Tragedy, 20, 246. Troad, 44. Trophonius, 71. Troy, 29, 34, 37, 46
f.,
49.
Tumpel,
K., 181.
Roland, Song
of,
100 f., 201, 269
ff.
Roman
Tylor, Prof., 75.

exUnchastity, pre-Greek, 21 purgated, 116. Understanding of Greek poetry,
;
character, 89. Rosso, 142.
Rutherford, 94. Rzach, 214.

Sacrifice,
St. Alexis,
It.
59
f.,
64.
(See
Human
Usener, 128, 186, 199, 202, 205.
Sacrifice, Ox).
274 ff. Samuel, 72, 105, 114, 123. Sarpedon, 190 f. Schliemann, 178.
Van Leeuwen,
Vergil, 2, 118.
214, 227.
f.
Virgins sacrificed, 121
^hulz, 235. Service of man,
1.
Wall, 212
see Polis;
f.
Wall
in
INDEX
Weber,
43.
283
ff.
;
Dark Age, 75
in
Homer,
Wecklein, 169. Wheeler, Prof., 252.
124 f., 150. Wooden Horse. 35.
Wide, Sam., 198. Wilamowitz, 47, 54,

207.
Wrath
125, 172, 181,
Lays, 35, 166f.
Winckler, 42, 259 f. Women in Athens,
16, 19
f.
in
Zenodotus, 277. Zeus, 47, 65 ff., 183, 238, 242, 249ff, Zoomorphic gods, 30, 128.
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The Rise of The Greek Epic - Murray (1906)

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GIFT OF

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

NEW YORK AND TORONTO

were written in response to an invitation

thus offered me, that I soon found

say so, a special place in association with the constant

and most considerate kindness

and Mrs. Lane and of

several points of archaeology

on Semitic matters, from

conscious of help received from Mr. J.

who read the much recent

also, will be visible

which might be unnecessary, and which in any

case were rather in the nature of afterthoughts.

As regards the Homeric Question, which forms

common phrases and hypotheses of My own views are not, of course,

identical with those of

Lachinann, Kirchhoff, Wilamowitz.

the main tradition of Wolff, But the more I read,

of good work being done on all of Greek religion and early

subjects have made within

which those The advance

Archaeologists are throwing shafts of light

even across that Dark Age of which I speak so

book, heaven knows

shine the more wonderful the more

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

GREECE AND THE PROGRESS OF MAN

Greek Poetry and Thought conceived as forces

Other modern views of the Greeks

The Greek The Greek

true, if rightly understood directly false

Hellenism always in an uphill war against ism \ e. g. in the questions of:

in the bettering of life be a poetical

The Puritan and the

Northerners, Achaeans, &c. Processes of invasion

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

This picture confirmed by the foundation-legends of the Ionian cities

The Dark Age

the Walled City

Religion of the Polis

THE CHAOS OF THE MIGRATIONS AND THE ELEMENT OF REGENERATION

Agricultural sanctions; the ox Tribal Gods the breaking up of tribes

Heroes, oracles, the dead The local Komi, or Earth-Maidens

Hesiod's five deadly sins The sanctity of the helpless

Small importance of Aidos in later Greek philosophy: Reasons

AN ANCIENT TRADITIONAL BOOK

Logoi The Muses.

book in early times and Logioi Andres'

Disturbing influences IVntateuch

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

Conscious: archaism and expurgation

THE ILIAD AS A TRADITIONAL BOOK

Cruel and barbarous practices (torture, stripping the

Sacrifice of Divine Kings.

War Path Division between Man

Tradition and Artistic Fiction

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

gus from the Corin'hiaca Reciprocal quotation in traditional books